


Home Under the Mountain

by So_Be_It



Series: Home Under the Mountain [1]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Bad Feels, Canon-Typical Racism, Cuddling, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Introspection, Explicit Consent, Extreme Loneliness, F/M, FRIEND FEELS, Family Feels, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Gold Sickness, Graphic Depictions of Injury/Gore, Graphic Violence, Injured Sex, Interdimensional Travel AU, Interracial Relationship, Like really slow, Oral Sex, Peculiar blend of book and movie canon, Penetrative Sex, Playing it fast and loose with the canon, Romantic Feels, Scars, Secrets, Slow Build, Smut, Some Body Insecurity, Surrogate family, Torture, Virtually All the Feels, general badassery, good feels, medical drug use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-19
Updated: 2014-07-30
Packaged: 2018-02-05 07:42:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 119,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1810639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/So_Be_It/pseuds/So_Be_It
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucy Bell has wandered Middle Earth for nearly seven years, trying to find an interdimensional portal like the one that brought her there, so that she can return to her own world and the younger brother she loves and desperately misses. As time has moved on, however, it has begun to seem increasingly unlikely that she will ever find a way back, and the years of isolation - to keep her secret, and to prevent emotional attachments from forming that may make it difficult to leave - have begun to take their toll. It seems impossible that she will find a way home, or that she can find a new home for herself in a world where she has few friends, no family, and no claim to belonging.<br/>She joins Thorin's Quest at Gandalf's behest, hoping that the long-deserted halls of Erebor harbor a forgotten secret, a portal that can take her home.</p><p> </p><p>There's no way to write the summary so the work sounds good. But it is - my cat loves it, and she's usually very critical.<br/>If you're just here for the hot interracial (interspecies?) sex, chapters are tagged appropriately and it's towards the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Light backstory and setup.  
> If you like a playlist with your fanfiction, Chapter One is to the tune of "Dying Day" by Brandi Carlile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: mentions of depression, vague suicidal ideation, emotional isolation.

Bag End was quite possibly Lucy Bell’s favorite place in the world. It was cozy, tidy, and homey. So homey, in fact, that she could occasionally pretend that it really was her home, and that she was not adrift in an unfamiliar land. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End was fussy in the manner of all hobbits, but not so fussy that he usually gave more than a pro forma objection to unexpectedly discovering her on his doorstep once again.

“Miss Lucy,” he said, hardly even seeming surprised to see her. “Well! It’s been quite some time, hasn’t it?”

“It has, Mr. Baggins,” Lucy agreed, smiling. Her most recent visit had been just over a year ago. “I’m sorry I didn’t post a letter to forewarn you I would be in the area, but at the rate I travel, I would have arrived before the notice.”

Bilbo laughed. “I suppose that’s the case. Come in, come in – might I get you a cup of tea?”

“Tea sounds lovely,” Lucy said, stepping over the threshold as the hobbit moved back from the door to allow her entry. She ducked to get through the doorway, but could stand without stooping once inside; Lucy was short for a human, which was a constant source of annoyance to her in combat, but a convenience when she happened to be in Hobbiton. “I don’t mean to intrude, of course, I can come back tomorrow if you’re busy.” She shrugged out of her cloak even as she spoke, her shoulders feeling much lighter without its weight.

“Not at all!” Bilbo called from the kitchen, and Lucy smiled. The compulsive hospitality of hobbits was as reliable as clockwork. “And what do you mean, come back?” He emerged from the kitchen with two mugs of tea – there must have already been a kettle on – beaming broadly.

“I planned on staying at the Prancing Pony,” Lucy explained, unbuckling her weapons belt and setting it carefully on the glory box in the foyer. “I don’t mean to make an imposition of myself.”

“You’ve never an imposition, Miss Lucy,” Bilbo protested, a polite lie. She was something of an imposition when she showed up on his doorstep in the middle of the night bleeding from a stabbing wound, as she had once done. “Come, sit.” Lucy obeyed, sinking gratefully into the armchair. If hobbits hadn’t favored overlarge armchairs and beds (being creatures of comfort), she would have been relegated to the less comfortable but human-size chair in the corner, but as it was she fit more or less comfortably into the nicer furniture.

“You’re perfectly welcome here, of course,” Bilbo went on, sipping from his own mug. “How long do you intend to stay?”

Lucy rubbed at the scar on her left hand unconsciously, her face thoughtful, and Bilbo glanced uncomfortably at the small gap in the world where she should have had a finger, and then away. He enjoyed houseguests, as did most of his kind, and he adored Lucy. She was an excellent guest, politely insisting on helping with the cooking and cleaning, buying groceries, happily finding small repair jobs to do in and around Bag End that would have been challenging for her diminutive host. She regaled him with stories of the world far and wide, and always had a few new jokes and riddles to tickle him with. However, perhaps her most appealing trait as a guest was that she kept herself appropriately shrouded in mystery.

Lucy was undeniably odd – carrying multiple weapons, traveling alone, sporting piercings by the handful, and if Bilbo occasionally wished to know more of her story, he was always quick to remind himself that he probably did not want to know.

Such was the case with her lack of a smallest finger on her left hand, and the gnarled mass of scar tissue that practically screamed that the appendage had been lost in some horrific manner.

Suppressing a shiver at the possibilities, Bilbo sipped his tea again. “Perhaps a week,” Lucy said slowly, noticing his tremor but ignoring it. Bilbo thought she hadn’t noticed at all, lost in thought as she appeared to be. “If it wouldn’t be an imposition, of course. I’ve been on the roads for months.”

Bilbo shuddered again, but this time didn’t hide it. “Months!” he repeated. “What a ghastly journey that must have been.”

Lucy considered, decided that it was best not to reply, and sipped her tea. It was good – Bilbo had rightly recalled that she didn’t care for chamomile and was allergic to bergamot, which restricted the varieties of tea she could imbibe. But whatever it was he had given her, it was good. She suspected that large amounts of honey had been involved, as well. “This is very good,” she said, deflecting. “Thank you.” Bilbo beamed at her.

“As always, it’s a pleasure,” he said. “You’re welcome here as long as you’d like.” He didn’t mean it literally, of course, but Lucy still thought that it was a dangerous invitation to issue, because often, when she was at Bag End, she wanted to forget her mad, doomed quest, wanted to curl up under the down comforters of the guest room and stay there forever, safe and warm and well-fed, and stop trying, stop hoping, stop struggling.

But she couldn’t let herself do that. Not yet.

 

 

The letter from Gandalf pulsed against the ribs above her liver like a second, oddly placed heart. Lucy touched it several times throughout the day, until Bilbo noticed and asked, somewhat nervously, if she was injured. It was entirely probable, but his guest only flashed him a quick, easy smile and assured him that she was entirely fine.

She had read the letter from Gandalf so many times by then that she didn’t even need to read it again, the creases where it had been folded and unfolded fuzzy and worn, the paper turning soft.

_My Dear Miss Lucy,_

_I hope firstly that this letter finds you, and secondly that it finds you well (although of course if it did not find you at all and you were well, that may be preferable to it finding you unwell, even though your wellness is hardly conditional upon you receiving this letter)._

She wasn’t terribly well at the time that it found her; she’d been camped outside some town of humans, wallowing in her own misfortune to a dangerous degree. To the degree that every weapon she carried had begun to look horribly inviting. _I weep, but what do such tears as mine avail me?_ And her wellness _had_ been conditional to receiving the letter, because the moment she’d opened it and seen Gandalf’s familiar script, she’d felt immensely, immeasurably better.

_I have for you a proposition of sorts, perhaps better termed an invitation. I will be traveling with a small Company of Dwarves in the coming months, and I feel that your presence on our Quest would aid us immensely._

And there he had gone on to describe a true quest, the kind with a history, heroes, villains, dragons, deranged kings, evil orcs, exiled royalty, a vast and invaluable treasure. Lucy’s breath still caught, sometimes, imagining it. Even for this world, it seemed too incredible to be real. It had nothing in common with her own sad, limping quest – lost girl, company of one.

It had piqued her interest even before her eyes reached the clincher Gandalf had written in.

_And although of course, if you sign on, you will be given one share of any profits of the Quest to fund your future wanderings, Erebor is a kingdom of Dwarves, Dwarves who dug deep into the heart of the mountain centuries ago. Although I have not yet heard of anything else approximating the anomaly that befell you, it is possible that such a thing may exist in the deepest reaches of the deepest caves and tunnels, long forgotten, or perhaps mentioned in the ancient records of the city._

Erebor could be her way home. Or it could be another dead end, but if it was a dead end, it was a noble one. Helping to return the King Under the Mountain to his mountain. Slaying a wildly dangerous animal, little as Lucy cared for either lynching or genocide. Accruing funds for her future ventures, as Gandalf had suggested.

_If this letter does indeed find you, finds you before the date below, and finds you interested, make haste to the residence of one Bilbo Baggins, with whom I believe you are acquainted, by the date you will find below. His residence is Bag End, Hobbiton, The Shire. I dearly hope to see you there, my friend._

_Gandalf the Grey_

It had felt like a stroke of luck that he named a place she knew so well, a place she could reach relatively quickly. Lucy had ridden hard for weeks to reach Bag End in time, and had arrived a day early. She was feeling quite lucky, indeed, even if Huckleberry seemed to disagree. While the pony loved Hobbiton as much as her mistress – a place where oats, lush grass, and other ponies abounded – and seemed mollified by their arrival, she hadn’t understood the call for such a hurried journey.

There had been a postscript at the foot of the letter just below the hurriedly scrawled date by which she should be at Bag End – as if Gandalf had had to wait for a date to be announced before he could write it down and send the letter, as if the whole project was somewhat slapdash.

_P.S. Kindly say nothing to the hobbit._

So Lucy left the letter tucked safely into her jerkin, and waited.

 

 

The next morning, Lucy lounged in the grass before Bag End while Bilbo smoked. He didn’t understand Lucy’s fondness for lying prostrate on the bare ground, even if it was sun-washed and cushioned by sweet-smelling greenery, but he tolerated like a good host tolerates any small quirk of their guests.

The date was upon them, but Lucy had no hint of any dwarvish company forthcoming until Gandalf himself appeared on the path – and even then she didn’t know anyone had arrived until Bilbo said, surprised, “Good morning.”

Lucy sat upright, blinking the sun from her eyes to catch sight of Gandalf, standing just outside the gate as he surveyed Bilbo thoughtfully. He shot her a quick wink, which she correctly interpreted as a bid for silence, and so she sat very still and didn’t speak, although she couldn’t hold back her smile as Gandalf’s challenging rigmarole of queries as to the intended meaning of “good morning”.

It was hard to sit on the ground with every muscle tensed with anxiousness and anticipation, so Lucy stood, brushing the grass from her back and pretending not to listen in as the conversation continued – amused on Gandalf’s end, tried on Bilbo’s. It was with the suggestion of an adventure that Bilbo finally stalked towards the door, pausing to ask her, “Miss Lucy?”

“I’m alright here,” she assured him, and with a nervous glance to the wizard, Bilbo went inside. She felt that he would normally have pushed the issue a little, with an eye to her safety, had Gandalf not so thoroughly alarmed him.

“Good morning,” she said to Gandalf, grinning, and a low, rich chuckle came from behind his beard.

“Good morning, indeed,” he laughed, reaching for her over the low fence as she approached, and Lucy leaned over it happily to hug him. “I never!” The wizard felt wiry and strong, his rough gray clothes as warm and musty as ever, and Lucy had to fight the urge to cling to him. Instead, she pulled away after the appropriate moment had elapsed, smiling at him. “You’ve had trying times, I wager,” Gandalf said, looking her up and down. He’d noticed her wanting to hold on, of course; Lucy didn’t know why she’d bothered with pretense. “Trouble in the West?”

“Some,” Lucy admitted. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

“Obviously,” Gandalf agreed, his blue eyes bright, and Lucy wrinkled her nose at him. “But trying nonetheless. And from your presence here, I take it that you have had no word of your home, or another anomaly.”

The smile fell off Lucy’s face, and it became closed-off. “No,” she said, folding her arms even though the sunshine was still warm across her back. “None at all.”

Gandalf clapped her on the shoulder, squeezing lightly. “Courage,” he consoled. “Things always work themselves out in the end, one way or another.” Lucy nodded, tucking a stray wisp of hair behind her ear. “It’s best you go in, now,” Gandalf advised. “I’m going to mark his door for the others to find, and I’ve some errands to run today, but you’ll see me tonight.”

“I look forward to it,” Lucy said, trying for a smile, and it came more easily than she expected it to. Gandalf touched her under the chin with a knuckle in a silent bid to keep her head up, and then Lucy turned and went back inside.

Bilbo was waiting, nervously, darting suspicious glances at the door. “Is he gone?”

“Going,” Lucy assured him, which was true. “I know he alarmed you, but he’s harmless.” _If he’s on your side._ “We’ve been friends for quite some time.” Of course, six years, to a twenty-six-year-old human, was quite some time, and to an immortal wizard was probably more like an eyeblink. Even to Bilbo, his five-year acquaintance with Lucy seemed brief.

The thought was slightly troubling, even if Lucy had no intentions of lingering in this world any longer than necessary, and she spent the afternoon ruminating behind the protective cover of one of Bilbo’s many books. She even read a little. Reading had been one of her passions, back when she could afford to have passions, and one of the best things about Bag End was that it had books and time to spare.

Bilbo didn’t wonder at her preoccupation. Lucy was odd. She came and went like a stray cat, taking what she was offered and asking for nothing more. She wore modest and mismatched jewelry and rode a mountain pony with an unintelligible name in her native language – a language that Bilbo had never heard before, and could not locate mention of in any of his many books and scrolls. She offered very little of herself, beyond anecdotes of travel, but repaid his hospitality in a multitude of small ways.

And there was, of course, the apparent friendship with the wizard. Watching unabashedly out the window, Bilbo had seen the pair embrace like old comrades. Yes, Lucy was very odd, indeed.

 

 

They were just sitting down to a quiet dinner in the kitchen when the knock came at the door. “Miss Lucy, would you be so kind as to see who that is?” Bilbo asked, finagling the fish from the frying pan to their plates. He obviously hated to ask, his face scrunched up in apology as he looked up at her.

“Of course,” Lucy said, setting down her glass of water and heading for the door. Her heart began to pound a little faster in anticipation. It had to be Gandalf, or the company.

She opened the round door to find a dwarf on the doorstep – and quite a large dwarf. Easily the tallest she’d ever seen, standing at her own height, and draped heavily in furs that she guessed came from wolves, thick leather straps crisscrossing his chest to bear the weight of the two war axes on his back. He was bald, his bare scalp as tattooed as his thick forearms. Lucy took in the sight of him first with mild surprise – she’d never met a dwarf who looked quite like this – and then admiration. She’d have bet he could bend iron bars with his bare hands, the lucky bastard. No one would try to jump _him,_ challenge _his_ worth as a fighter, ask pesky questions about _his_ business in any given area of the world.

“Dwalin, son of Fundin,” he greeted, bowing. “At your service.”

“Lucy Bell,” Lucy replied, nodding in return. She’d yet to grow used to bowing. “At yours.”

Dwalin sized her up in return, openly – small lass, for a human, being as she was only about as tall as him, sunburned cheeks, rough fighter’s hands, and no discernible fear or shock on her face at his appearance. If anything, the look she’d given him was one of appreciation. “Where’s this Mr. Baggins?” he asked, at the same moment that Bilbo called out, “Miss Lucy? Who is it?”

“It’s a Mister Dwalin,” Lucy called back.

“A _who?”_

Bilbo emerged from the kitchen wiping his hands on a dishtowel, blanching quite spectacularly at the sight of Dwalin, who eyed him with much less approval than he’d given Lucy. “Dwalin, son of Fundin,” he repeated. “At your service.”

Bilbo visibly gulped. “Bilbo Baggins at yours. I – I beg your pardon, do we know each other?”

Dwalin frowned. “No. So where is it, then, lad?” he asked, shrugging out of his furs. “Is it down here?”

“Is what down where?” Bilbo said, clearly shocked.

“Supper,” Dwalin replied. “He said there’d be food, and lots of it.” Lucy had to swallow a laugh at Bilbo’s continuing disbelief as Dwalin invited himself into the kitchen, even though it really wasn’t too nice of her to keep Bilbo in the dark when she knew what was happening. But Gandalf had said not to enlighten Bilbo, and Gandalf always had his reasons. And good ones, to boot.

“He – he said?” Bilbo called weakly after him. “Who said? Miss Lucy?” He turned to her, hoping for explanation, but Lucy only shrugged, pursuing Dwalin into the kitchen with bright eyes.

Bilbo ended up taking turns at watching Dwalin eat – which was a shocking experience in and of itself – and watching Lucy watch Dwalin eat. She appeared entirely enthralled by the brute’s presence, gazing at him with a peculiar look on her face and her chin propped in her hand (elbow on the table, which would normally have wrought havoc on Bilbo’s fine sense of table manners, if Dwalin hadn’t already trodden it entirely into the ground).

The peculiar look that Bilbo could not place was a blend of hope, longing, and plain amusement. Though it still wasn’t strictly kind to find entertainment in Bilbo’s distress, Lucy did. The look of consternation fixed on his small face was just too comical. The entire being of the hobbit was comical, actually, juxtaposed with the fearsome dwarf at his table, and Lucy knew she probably looked just as ridiculous, staring at him all starry-eyed, but it proved impossible to stop. If the other dwarves were warriors like this, surely their group had a crack at retaking the mountain, and then, maybe . . .

“Very good, that,” Dwalin said approvingly, when he’d finished off both of the fish Bilbo had poached. “Any more?” Bilbo seemed befuddled by the request, taking a moment to find the plate of biscuits, and as he turned back to the table, Lucy saw him pocket one. It really was funny, and she couldn’t help smiling. “Lass?” Dwalin asked, offering her the plate, and she shook her head, appetite temporarily suspended by hope. He tucked in with renewed vigor.

“It’s, it’s just,” Bilbo said uncertainly, hands deep in his pockets as he rocked back on his heels, “I wasn’t – we weren’t – expecting company.”

The doorbell rang at that exact moment, and Dwalin glanced sidelong up at their host. “That’ll be the door,” he grated.

 _Lucy is taking this entire bizarre occurrence entirely too lightly,_ Bilbo thought sourly as he headed to the door. _She’s_ smiling. _With that stranger – that quite possibly mad and definitely dangerous stranger – eating our dinner!_ Lucy, for her part, was trying to think of what else she could offer the apparently ravenous Dwalin, that Bilbo wouldn’t mind her offering, when a small dwarf, around Bilbo’s height, with a snowy beard came in from the foyer. He and Dwalin greeted each other warmly, as brothers, and she couldn’t hold in her startled laugh when they cracked foreheads. Bilbo jumped.

“Balin, son of Fundin, at your service,” Balin greeted Lucy, grasping her hands in the manner of humans.

“Lucy Bell, at yours,” Lucy said, smiling at him. He looked like somebody’s sweet old grandpa – and considering the lifespans of dwarves, he likely was. She took to him immediately, even if he and his brother did promptly take to ransacking the pantry. Bilbo had taken everything so far with some degree of grace, but at the sight of strangers going through his food, he got understandably fussy.

“It’s not that I don’t like visitors,” he said from the pantry doorway, where Lucy was slouched against the doorframe to survey the goings-on. “I like visitors as much as the next – hobbit. But I do like to know them before they come – visiting.” He glanced at Lucy on the last few words, and she remembered the first time she’d shown up at his door. She hadn’t meant to stop, to intrude, to make a friend, but she’d been utterly convinced that she and Huckleberry couldn’t make it a step further. She’d stopped just to let the pony graze at the grass outside the gate, because it was outside the gate, after all, surely the homeowner wouldn’t begrudge the sweet pony a few mouthfuls of grass, and it looked good even to Lucy, who was wondering what effects it might have on her cramped, snarled tangle of an empty stomach if she indulged.

Bilbo had come outside all huff about the grass, gotten halfway through a very polite but outraged statement before he really got a look at Lucy, and then promptly invited her inside, where he served tea and quickly-cobbled sandwiches with shaking hands, perched anxiously on the edge of his seat as she ate, and finally was gratified to see the color bleed back into her cheeks while Huckleberry munched on the lawn outside.

“– I don’t know, I think it’s supposed to be cheese,” Balin said fretfully, his worried tone tugging Lucy back to the present. “It’s gone blue.”

“Oh, it’s riddled with mold,” Dwalin observed, and chucked the offending blue cheese over his shoulder. Lucy’s head snapped around to follow its trajectory, and it landed with a muffled thud against the floor, where it disintegrated into crumbles of the perfect size for the salads Bilbo favored. Bilbo himself was still babbling about visitors, even as he glanced at the cheese-splatter, and Lucy truly felt sorry for him for the first time, confused as he was.

“I, uh, I don’t mean to be blunt,” he said, concluding his little speech, “but I had to speak my mind. I’m _sorry.”_ He held up both hands, and the dwarves turned to look at him in momentary confusion. “Apology accepted,” Balin said brightly, and went back to pillaging. The bell rung before Bilbo could try again.

“Lucy?” he pleaded, the ‘miss’ finally forgotten.

“Got it,” she replied, boosting off of the doorframe and heading for the front of the house. The round green door opened to reveal two dwarves, both of whom surprised Lucy because she wasn’t used to thinking of dwarves as young or handsome, but here the pair of them was, and they were both. Especially handsome.

“Fili,” said the dwarf with golden hair in meticulous braids, a smiling frown of polite bemusement on his face as he took in the sight of her. As if Lucy was the surprising one.

“And Kili,” said the brunette, whose messy hair fell into his eyes. They bowed in unison, adding enthusiastically, “At your service!”

Lucy knew enough of dwarves to be surprised that they didn’t name their father, but she also knew better than to ask. “Lucy Bell,” she replied, smiling. “Are you –?”

“No!” Bilbo yelped behind her, his bare feet pattering audibly across the floor as he raced towards them. “No! You can’t come in!”

The brunette put a foot across the threshold against any attempt to close the door even though Lucy made none, a frown clouding his face. “Has it been cancelled?”

“No one told us,” the blond chimed in. Lucy already forgotten which was Kili and which was Fili, and could foresee that it’d be a clever trick to figure it out without asking, prone to melee as the few dwarves in the house had already proven to be.

“Canc– ? No, nothing’s been cancelled,” Bilbo said, shaking his head in confusion, and wide smiles broke over the brothers’ faces.

“Well, that’s a relief,” said the brunette, edging inside with his brother behind him.

“Careful with these,” the blond – Fili? – warned, handing his swords over to Bilbo. “I just had ‘em sharpened.” Lucy bit back a laugh at the look of surprised horror on Bilbo’s face, looking around for the other brother to find him smiling at her, his gaze curious.

“You’re not a hobbit,” he said interestedly.

“Nah, she’s the human lass, brother,” the blond explained, pulling off his coat. “Do you not _listen?”_

“I do sometimes,” the brunette said, grinning rakishly at Lucy as he moved deeper into the house. “It’s nice, this place,” he observed. “Did you do it yourself?”

Lucy assumed this was directed to Bilbo, who replied in the negative only to break off midsentence with an exclamation of horror as the darker brother began scraping the mud off his boots on the edge of the hallway trunk. She didn’t quite hear what he said, distracted by a clatter from the direction of the kitchen, where Dwalin and Balin seemed to be wreaking havoc, quickly substantiated by Dwalin entering the foyer to clap the brown-haired dwarf on the shoulder. “Fili, Kili,” he said, offering Lucy no enlightenment whatsoever as to which name was whose. “Give us a hand.”

“Mister Dwalin!” the brunette said happily, letting himself be led away. Lucy followed, curious about the goings-on more than she was concerned for Bilbo’s belongings, although the two sentiments were beginning to even out.

“Here, shove these in here, else we’ll never get everyone to fit,” Balin said, gesturing to a clutch of chairs that he seemed to have commandeered from other rooms of the house.

“Wh– everyone?” Bilbo cried, and cheerfully rang the doorbell. “Oh, no!” Lucy didn’t hear the details of Bilbo’s rant as he started for the door, preoccupied counting chairs.

“Fifteen of us, all told,” Balin informed her. “Counting yourself, of course, miss.”

“Just Lucy, Mister Balin,” Lucy said, smiling at him. “And could you tell me which of the young dwarves is which?”

“Fili’s the blond,” Balin informed her. “If you’ve trouble keeping it straight, remember that _K_ ili’s as like as not to _k_ ill himself on some mad lark, one day.” He said the last part loud enough to be heard, pointedly, and Kili glanced over at her with a wide grin that Lucy felt corroborated Balin’s statement succinctly.

There was a series of thuds and cries from the foyer, and Lucy leaned around the doorframe to see a veritable heap of dwarves on the front rug, Gandalf standing behind them, bent nearly double to peer through the doorway. She laughed aloud, Kili quickly crossing the room to see what had caught her attention, and he laughed, too, charging forward to help pull the dwarves apart. Lucy joined him, names and “at your service”-s falling on her ears faster than she could connect them with faces.

The chaos reached a fever pitch once every had regained their feet, dwarves weaving in and out of the pantry like a steady stream of ants, all hustle and bustle. Bilbo tried vainly to reclaim a vestige of control, his angry little voice sounding impotently of the lower rumble of dwarves discussing the merits of the available foods and catching up on each other’s exploits since their prior meetings. Lucy found herself swept up into the current, still catching occasional introductions, at one point squeezed uncomfortably between a rather rotund dwarf with bright orange hair and a funny-smelling fellow in a dramatically peaked felt hat, at another bumped into someone who introduced himself as Nori – and at her service, of course – with almost enough force to send her to the ground. “Easy, lads!” he yelled as he pulled her up by the straps of her jerkin. “We’ll crush the human!”

“He’s right,” Dwalin opined as she turned to wrestle her way out of the pantry and promptly bumped off his fur-clad chest. “Best get yourself into the dining room, lass.”

Lucy found herself being passed along by the dwarves, which she did not altogether care for, and settled into a dining chair in between Kili and Balin as the last of the food – quite possibly the last of the food in the world, judging by the sheer volume of it – was loaded onto the table, which groaned at the weight and at being pressed against from all sides as the dwarves found their seats in the now-cramped room. She figured out where Gandalf was in the hubbub only when someone said his name, and glanced up to see a dwarf with very tidy silver braids offering the wizard tea.

“What about you?” Balin asked. “Tea, Lucy?”

“Uh, no thank you,” Lucy said, looking around for a spare glass, mug, or tankard. They were being passed around even as she looked.

“Ale, then,” Kili said brightly, offering a tankard.

“Oh, no, I don’t drink ale,” Lucy said, and laughed at the affronted look on his face.

“That can’t be healthy,” Fili opined from Kili’s other side. “What do you drink, then?”

“Usually just water,” Lucy said, anticipating and enjoying their shocked reactions before she turned to Balin. “Is everyone here? You said fifteen, and at the moment it feels like fifty.”

“Let’s see,” Kili said, looking out over the room. “Oin, Gloin.”

“Bifur, Bofur, Bombur,” Fili joined in.

“Balin, Dwalin,” Kili continued, _“Us._ Nori, Dori – there’s Ori!” Lucy looked across the table, following his gaze by reflex, and spotted possibly the youngest dwarf she’d ever seen, with a bowl haircut and a crooked nose that she sincerely hoped he’d grow into. He flashed her a nervous smile.

“And Uncle,” Fili concluded. “He’s late.”

“He had to travel North, lads,” Balin reminded them around Lucy, who leaned back in her seat so he could see them. “He’ll doubtless be here soon.”

The last few dwarves made it to the table as he spoke, and the conversation dissolved under the brunt of the sheer noise. Although Lucy hadn’t had particularly enjoyable interactions with dwarves in the past, she very quickly decided that she liked this bunch. They were contagiously merry, and even though Bilbo obviously wasn’t susceptible to the infectious laughter, Lucy was. The dwarves were loud and messy, any irritation that may have caused balanced by the high spirits and sense of camaraderie. They were raucous to the point of being wild, even by Lucy’s lax standards, such as when someone threw a boiled egg directly into Bombur’s mouth from across the table – a feat impressive enough that Lucy joined in the cheering – or when Fili had enough of struggling to get out of his chair by conventional methods and instead clambered up onto the table and walked down its length to refill tankards, and then back up to regain his seat. It was utter madness, but not of the kind Lucy found objectionable. It was fun, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had fun.

Things grew marginally quieter when everyone had full bellies, spreading out from the table to find less cramped areas of the house to occupy. Lucy set out in search of Gandalf, encountering guests in the strangest places – Bifur or Bofur (she was sure one of those was his name) perched on the edge of the sink, Dwalin reclining on the kitchen island with a tankard, Fili and Kili holed up on a too-small sofa in the living room, talking between themselves and bumping shoulders when they laughed, heads bent close together. The sight made Lucy’s heart ache a little for missing her own brother, and she quickly turned away, to be confronted with the sight of the wizard she’d been looking for.

“Lucy, my dear.” Gandalf beamed down at her, clearly enjoying the madcap gathering as much as she. “How do you like the Company?” She could hear the capital letter he assigned the word.

“I like it a lot, actually,” Lucy said, dodging Nori – Dori? – as he hurried past with a tea tray. “It’s _fun._ I haven’t had fun in years.”

Gandalf laughed. “Yes, they are quite a boisterous group, are they not? Although I must say, I find some of their shenanigans less entertaining after a long day of travel.”

“Oh, don’t be like that, Gandalf,” Kili cried from the sofa, looking up with bright eyes. “You only burned off a _wee_ bit of your beard.” And he held up his finger and thumb to indicate a length of maybe an inch, winking at Lucy. She laughed, tickled by the idea of a prank gone so awry – or possibly just as intended, depending on the deviousness of the brothers.

“A wizard’s beard is a serious matter, my young Master Kili,” Gandalf said sternly, but his eyes were crinkled at the corners by a smile. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Lucy, I must find our hobbit. He seemed rather taxed the last I saw him.”

He left, and Lucy looked at Kili. Fili was snickering into his tankard over some muttered joke. “What did you do to his beard?” Lucy asked, and Fili snorted violently, ale spraying up from the rim of his tankard. He drew back to rub his sleeve over his wet face, chortling.

“Oh, we swore never to tell,” Kili said seriously, though his dark eyes were bright with humor and what Lucy suspected was mischief. He seemed exactly the kind of merry fool Balin had described him as.

“It does not leave the Company,” Fili added, grinning.

“Well, will you tell me if I sign on?” Lucy asked lightly, crossing her arms and leaning against the wall.

The brothers exchanged a look. “Did the threat extend beyond only the present Company, or was there a clause for future members?” Kili asked.

“I dunno,” Fili said, and smiled at Lucy over his tankard. “Better not take the risk.” She wrinkled her nose at them, and they laughed. Fili belched, and then stood. “Excuse me,” he said, ducking around her. “I need the water closet.”

“Well, then, I’m off to find Balin,” Lucy said, turning for the hallway. “A bit more sensible than you two.” She hoped that the sedate older dwarf could help her more firmly affix faces to the rhyming names ringing in her ears.

“Oh, we’re sensible,” Kili protested, jumping to his feet and following her into the adjacent hallway, tankard abandoned. He slung a familiar arm around her shoulders, almost making her jump. “Where did we lead you to believe otherwise? Was it the talk of pranking the wizard, or my deplorable lack of a proper beard?”

Lucy laughed. “Mostly the talk, although the beard may have weighed into it.”

“Well, _you’ll_ never have any beard at all,” Kili sniffed, mock-offended. He drew a long-stemmed pipe from a pocket, packing tobacco into it. _“Mine’s_ still growing.” Lucy laughed again, already fairly sure that she and the young dwarves would get along very well. Dangerous pranks and mad larks sounded good to someone who spent most of her time scheming, fighting, and worrying.

They wandered across an obvious dispute between Bilbo and Gandalf, Lucy quickly backpedaling, but the little dwarf, Ori – _his_ name, at least, she was sure of – had already interrupted, asking about his plate. “Here you go, Ori, give it to me,” Fili said, coming out of the bathroom to take the young dwarf’s plate, which he promptly winged in Kili’s direction. Lucy ducked, dropping into a crouch to avoid being hit – the plate would probably have struck with about the same effect as a ceramic Frisbee.

Kili caught it easily and promptly flung it into the next room. Lucy winced, but didn’t hear it shatter. A second plate was quick to follow, and she looked towards Fili to see him catching crockery as it was thrown out of the dining room and redirecting it to his brother, who in turn sent it to the kitchen. Lucy moved out of the way and rose, amazed, moving into the dining room to see who else was engaged in the risky game as Bilbo’s enraged little voice rose up behind her. Fili and Kili began to grow bold, bouncing dishes from elbow to elbow before sending them onward, or off their knees. _Crazy,_ Lucy marveled, watching four dwarves of indeterminate name begin to play some kind of game with the silverware, still seated at the table. A consistent, thudding beat began, and she peered under the table to see them stomping rhythmically. “Stop that!” Bilbo hollered. “And could you not do that?! You’ll _blunt_ them!”

“Oh, do y’hear that, lads?” crowed one of the dwarves with knives – Bofur? “He says we’ll _blunt the knives_.”

There was a chorus of laughter throughout the house, and Lucy peered back into the hallway just as Kili sang out, “ _Blunt the knives, bend the forks!_ ” He had a wonderful voice, she had time to note, before Fili sang, “ _Smash the bottles and burn the corks!_ ”

“ _Chips the glasses and crack the plates!_ ” came from everyone at once, making Lucy and Bilbo both jump. “ _That’s what Bilbo Baggins HATES!_ ” Lucy laughed at that lyric, but the song was far from over, and she ran from room to room, trying to see everything at once. “ _Cut the cloth and trail the fat! Leave the bones on the bedroom mat!_ ” Dwalin was bouncing empty tankards that were thrown his way off his forehead as he strummed some stringed instrument, Ori carrying a wobbly stack of dishes taller than he was. Lucy started laughing, delighted. “ _Pour the milk on the pantry floor! Splash the wine on every door!_ ” Lucy dodged airborne crockery where she could, glad that the dwarves were skilled enough to compensate when she couldn’t. Even Balin was participating, bouncing dishware off a single plate that he handled with an air of a good-natured elder indulging youngsters. The sight made Lucy laugh all the harder. “ _Dump the crocks in a boiling bowl! Smash them with a thumping pole!_ ” Kili scrambled up a doorway like a monkey to hurl a serving fork in Bifur’s general direction, Lucy almost shouting a warning before the other dwarf caught the utensil an inch from his head. “ _And when you’ve finished, if they are whole . . . send them down the hall to roll! That’s what Bilbo Baggins hates!_ ” Lucy scrambled into the kitchen again in time to see the end product of the song – neatly stacked, clean dishes, and clear tabletops. Bilbo looked stunned, and she laughed again at his expression, applauding the performance as the dwarves broke down into laughter.

“Very nice,” she said to no one in particular, and discovered Fili and Kili at her side, admiring their company’s handiwork. “See?” Kili said. “Sensible – oh, look at his face!” He gestured to Bilbo, laughing uproariously, a grinning Fili pounding on his back in agreement.

Before Lucy could retort, several loud, ominous thuds sounded at the front door. Far more used to the cheerful trill of the doorbell, it took her and Bilbo both a moment to identify the sound. Gandalf lifted his head, smile gone. “He is here,” he said gravely, and stood to get the door. Lucy followed, curious – although the last thing she really needed was another confoundingly similar name to match to yet another bearded face.

The door opened to reveal the final dwarf, gray streaks in his black hair, something obviously regal about his bearing. He surveyed the wizard with a very slight smile. “Gandalf,” he greeted. “I thought you said this place would be easy to find.” He stepped inside, adding, “I lost my way, twice.”

Those that had gathered in the hallway bowed to him as he removed his coat, and Lucy fixed on the stately dwarf. He had to be the king Gandalf had mentioned in his letter, the unseated ruler without a real kingdom. It was easy to believe, although more difficult was the idea that having him for an uncle made Fili and Kili princes. Though she’d never met royalty before, Lucy had never imagined princes setting fire to people’s beards or flinging dishes around like confetti.

Bilbo fussed over the mention of a mark on his door before Gandalf could introduce him, almost bodily turning the hobbit to face the royalty on his hallway rug. “Bilbo Baggins,” he said, “allow me to introduce the leader of our company, Thorin Oakenshield.”

Lucy observed quietly, pressing herself into a shadowy corner of the hallway, tucked against a small cabinet. She preferred to avoid notice as long as possible, an uncomfortable fluttering feeling arising in her chest. Gandalf noticed her, his eyes alighting on her but quickly moving away. Good man, Lucy thought, and looked to Thorin again.

“So,” he said slowly, surveying Bilbo with cool blue eyes. “This is the hobbit. Tell me, Mister Baggins, have you done much fighting?” Lucy didn’t care for that tone; she hoped he didn’t employ it often. King or not, that attitude would get old fast.

“Pardon me?” Bilbo asked, clearly disoriented.

“Axe or sword? What’s your weapon of choice?” Thorin pressed, now circling like a shark. Lucy didn’t like that, either, and hoped he’d skip it when he came to her.

“Well, I do have some skill in conkers,” Bilbo said, an attempt at a joke that fell flat. “If you must know, but I, uh, fail to see why that’s relevant.”

“Thought as much,” Thorin said dismissively. “He looks more like a grocer than burglar.” There was a smattering of laughter, which made Lucy bristle, stepping out of the cabinet’s protective shadow. It was true, but that _tone._ “And the human?” Thorin asked Gandalf, turning slowly to survey the room. “Where is she?”

“Here,” Lucy said, taking another step forward, holding her head high. Those nearest her shuffled out of the way to make room for Thorin to get a good look.

That critical blue gaze fell on her, now, and Lucy met it with her own steady, even look. “What of you?” he asked. “Fighting?”

“More than I’d like,” Lucy replied.

“And your weapons?”

“I favor best those which Nature gave me,” Lucy said, lifting her chin a fraction.

“What?” Bilbo said, confused.

“Her hands,” Gandalf explained patiently, his eyes bright as he smiled at Lucy over Thorin’s head. “She prefers to fight with her hands.”

_And elbows and knees and shins and feet and skull and teeth._

Thorin’s eyes narrowed almost indiscernibly. “Not of much use against an orc’s sword, are they?”

“I said that I favor my body best,” Lucy said, forcing the sharp edge from her voice. She smiled at the king. “Not exclusively. I’m also good with a short sword, knives, and a bow, though of the three I’m best with the bow.” She said nothing about the throwing stars hidden in the panels of her jerkin.

Thorin grunted, apparently unable to find an issue with this statement. “Gandalf spoke most highly of you,” he said, as though weighing the worth of Gandalf’s word, and, to Lucy’s surprise, he gave her a nod. It could have meant virtually anything, but from the relieved breaths and shuffling from the other dwarves, Lucy guessed it was a nod of approval. She returned it, and Thorin moved into the next room, surprisingly graceful for a dwarf, his people following.

Lucy found two heavy arms slung around her shoulders. “Don’t mind him,” Kili assured her.

“He’s always like that,” Fili added.

“And he’s hard to read, even for us,” Kili said thoughtfully. “Far as we know, he may even _like_ you.”

“Wouldn’t take it that far,” Fili remarked, and then the princes were both grinning at her and slipping away, hurrying after their uncle. As Bombur busied himself getting dinner together for the king, Thorin knocked foreheads with Fili and Kili – Lucy couldn’t get used to that _sound,_ although she’d heard it a dozen times over the course of the evening – clasping the backs of their necks, gripping their shoulders to get a good look at them, his eyes warming considerably as they combed over both of his nephews for any hint of injury or illness. Maybe he wasn’t intolerable – just stressed from the journey here, and from organizing the expedition. Lucy hoped so as she joined the others, once more jammed in around the dining table.

“How went the meetings?” Balin asked when Thorin had had a few moments to eat and sip his ale. “Did they all come?”

“Aye,” Thorin confirmed. “Dwarves from all seven kingdoms.” There was a chorus of relieved laughter around the table.

“What of the dwarves of the Iron Hills?” Dwalin asked, unsmiling. “Is Dain with us?” Lucy looked curiously to Thorin’s closed face, hoping to glean useful information from the conversation. She knew of the Iron Hills, at least, had been there herself. She hadn’t cared for the experience.

“They will not come,” Thorin said, to immediate groans and mumbles of disappointment. “They say this quest is ours, and ours alone.”

“You’re – going on a quest?” Bilbo ventured from the hallway, apparently listening in as intently as Lucy.

“Bilbo, my dear fellow,” Gandalf said quickly. “Let us have a little more light.” Bilbo jumped to light the lamps, Lucy frowning at the tabletop. She had been in traveling groups before, and when she was younger – _in my other life_ – she had worked as a part of a team, had set out with others with a goal in mind. Never had the mood been like this, quiet and solemn. Worried. The dwarves’ earlier merriment was more in keeping with what she expected. Although, of course, a mere fifteen people setting out to kill a dragon and reclaim an entire kingdom was a daunting undertaking. She traced a whorl in the wood grain of the table, musing as Gandalf stood.

“Far to the East,” he said, pulling thick paper from his pocket. “Over ranges, and rivers . . . woodlands, and wetlands . . . lies a single, solitary peak.” Lucy strained forward to see the map like everyone else, although she knew of their destination, had already pinpointed it on her own maps.

“The Lonely Mountain,” Bilbo read aloud, peering down at the map with a candle in hand.

“Aye!” Oin or Gloin said. “Oin has read the portents –” So the speaker was Gloin, then. “– and the portents say it is time!”

“Ravens have been seen flying back to the mountain, as it was foretold,” chimed his brother. “When the birds of yore return to Erebor, the reign of the beast will end.”

“Oh!” Bilbo interrupted, standing in the doorway. “What beast?”

“Well, that would be a reference to Smaug the Terrible,” Bofur explained jocularly. “Chiefest and greatest calamity of our age. Airborne fire-breather. Teeth like razors, claws like meat-hooks. Extremely fond of precious metals –”

“Yes, I know what a dragon is,” Bilbo interrupted again, nervously. Lucy had been wedged in between Ori and Bombur, so she jumped in surprise when the young dwarf leaped to his feet. “I’m not afraid! I’m up for it!” he declared, a bit less than convincing. “I’ll give him a taste of Dwarvish iron right up his jacksie!”

“Sit _down!”_ Dori commanded, dragging his youngest brother back into his seat, aided by a fistful of Ori’s sweater. Lucy bit down on her laugh as someone cried, “Good lad, Ori!”

“The task would be difficult enough with an army behind us,” Balin said over the scattered chuckles. “But we number just thirteen. And not thirteen of the best.” He raised a white eyebrow. “Or brightest.”

There was an immediate outcry at that remark, one quickly settled by Fili’s fist striking the tabletop. “We may be few in number,” he said over the other voices, “but we’re fighters! All of us! To the last dwarf!”

“And you forget we have a _wizard_ in our company! Gandalf will have killed hundreds of dragons in his time.”

Lucy looked curiously to Gandalf, who was already raising a hand. “Oh, well, now,” he fumbled. “I – I wouldn’t say –”

“How many, then?” Dori inquired.

“I – What?”

“How many dragons have you killed?” the silver-braided merchant insisted.

They all looked to Gandalf, who had taken too long a toke from his pipe and was now trying not to cough. Or answer. Or make eye contact with anyone.

The room quickly erupted into shouting, dwarves jumping to their feet to shout at one another, fists thrust in the air, fingers jabbed across the table. Lucy sank deeper into her chair, glad that she was between Bombur, who was too large to hurl himself about with any suddenness, and Ori, who was too small to do her any accidental damage. She would have been far more uncomfortable seated next to, say, Dwalin, or even Kili, who apparently made up for what he lacked in bulk with ferocity.

“Enough!” Thorin roared, finally standing, himself, and the other quickly fell back to their seats. “If we have read these signs, do you not think others will have read them, too? Rumors have begun to spread. The dragon Smaug has not been seen for sixty years. Eyes look East to the mountain, wondering. Weighing the risk. Perhaps the vast wealth of our people now lies unprotected. Will we sit back while others claim what is rightfully ours? Or do we seize this chance to take back Erebor?!”

This time, the room burst into cheers. Lucy considered the impromptu speech thoughtfully as the matter of entering the mountain was raised, Balin reminding them all that the gate was sealed before Gandalf produced a key. It was a strange key; Lucy didn’t think she’d ever seen its like, and she listened closely to Gandalf’s interpretation of the Dwarvish runes on the map, although she was disappointed to hear him admit that he hadn’t the skill to decipher the thing himself. “But, there are others in Middle Earth who can,” he concluded. “The task I have in mind will require a great deal of stealth, and no small amount of courage.” Here he looked at Bilbo, and Lucy smiled. The hobbit looked blank, and then alarmed. “But, if we are careful, and clever, I believe that it can be done.”

Lucy gazed at the map, though she couldn’t see its details. She was careful, clever, stealthy, and courageous, but there was no guarantee that she would survive the dragon, that Erebor would be the place, finally, to send her home.

"That’s why we need a burglar,” Ori said in a tone of new understanding, making her smile again.

“Mm, and a good one too,” Bilbo agreed. “An expert, I’d imagine.”

“And are you?” Gloin pressed.

Bilbo blinked, looked over his shoulder. “Am I what?”

“He said he’s an expert!” Oin crowed, mishearing through his warped earhorn.

“Me? No! No, no, no, no. I’ve never stolen a thing in my life!”

“I’m afraid I have to agree with Mister Baggins,” Balin said grimly. “He’s hardly burglar material.”

“Aye, the wild is no place for gentle folk who can neither fight nor fend for themselves,” Dwalin agreed, and Lucy rubbed hard at the knot of scar where she should have had a pinky finger, frowning. Bilbo, for his part, was entirely unoffended by the statements, shrugging as the conversation devolved into another twelve-way argument, Thorin glowering in his seat.

“ _Enough!_ ” Gandalf finally cried, rising from his seat as all the room’s shadows began to flock to him. Lucy shrank in her seat, not caring at all for that particular display of magic, though it delighted her when he sparked a fire with just his fingertips or somesuch. His voice swelled, sonorous. “ _If I say that Bilbo Baggins is a burglar than a burglar he is!_ ”

Calming, the shadows dissipating, Gandalf went on, “Hobbits are remarkably light on their feet. In fact, they can pass unseen by most, if they choose. And while the dragon is accustomed to the smell of dwarf, the scent of hobbit is all but unknown to him, which gives us a distinct advantage.” He sat again, turning to Thorin. “You asked me to find the fourteenth member of this Company, and I have chosen Mister Baggins. There is a lot more to him than appearances suggest. And he’s got a great deal more to offer than any of you know! Including himself.” He glanced at Bilbo, who was visibly taken aback. “You must trust me on this.”

Thorin gazed at him for a long moment. “Very well,” he said finally. “But what of the human? While Mister Baggins at least has some clear purpose, I am yet unsure why you wish her to join our Company.”

All heads immediately swiveled to the opposite end of the room, eyes fixing immediately on Lucy. “Miss Bell is a young woman of multiple, varied, and considerable talents,” Gandalf said, regarding her with a critical eye. “She is a fearsome fighter and a talented healer, both of which skills I have borne witness to.”

“We have a healer,” Gloin said, indicating his brother with a jerk of his chin. “And what would the lass know of Dwarvish healing?”

“More than you’d think,” Gandalf said sharply. “Fighting and healing aside, she’s a good hunter and trapper, remarkably well-traveled, and a speaker of nearly as many languages as me. She is insightful, intelligent, practical, and unflinching. That all being said, she has many talents and skills of which I am entirely unaware, as she is a constant surprise to me even after years of acquaintance, and I do not doubt that one or three of these will prove very useful down the road.” He paused to think for a moment. “And she is wholly dedicated to a cause whose pursuit will aid your goal greatly.”

Lucy listened to the succinct, if dramatic, description of her merits without interrupting. “And I’m an excellent cook,” she said finally, deadpan. There was a ripple of laughter.

“And she’s an excellent cook,” Gandalf agreed, his blue eyes smiling.

Thorin contemplated the young woman before him. She was very small for a human, hardly taller than Dwalin, but her dark eyes were level and steady on his. Her clothes, face, and hands all showed signs of wear that supported Gandalf’s claim that she was a fighter and a traveler, her clothes and jewelry practical, understated. She was missing a finger, he noted with a small jolt of surprise, and the scar was uneven and messy – smashed or hacked off, not neatly amputated. She’d seen pain then, witnessed also by the white scar near her left temple, along her hairline. And though she looked hardly older than a babe to him – far less hirsute and more slender than any grown dam he’d ever seen, with a round face and large, round eyes – she had to be of adult age by her own race’s standards, however, or she would hardly be in Hobbiton, alone, signing up for such a quest.

“Aye,” he said finally, and the mood around the table tangibly brightened. “Give them the contracts.”

“We’re off!” Bofur declared cheerfully, others beginning to talk amongst themselves.

“Congratulations,” Ori told Lucy nervously, smiling at her with his crooked teeth. Those, sadly, would not improve his appearance as he got older, or so she estimated, but he was awfully cute at the moment.

“Thank you,” she said, smiling back. “Though I haven’t decided, just yet.”

“Just the usual,” Balin said over the low chatter. “Summary, out-of-pocket expenses, time required, rumination, funeral arrangements, so forth.” Lucy accepted the bundle of thick parchment that was handed down the table to her, but Bilbo was shocked, parroting, “F-funeral arrangements?”

The words twisted at Lucy, too, but only because there was no need for her to have any funeral arrangements. They could toss her corpse into a river, if they cared to, leave it by the roadside, roll it down a ravine. No one would miss her if she was gone, except Gandalf and Bilbo, Beorn, perhaps a few others. She could name five people in the world who might mind her absence from it, if she played it fast and loose with the word ‘friend’. Enough to count on one hand.

She smiled to herself, a little bitterly. _Well,_ she corrected, _on my_ right _hand._ The only people who loved her, who would grieve and mourn her instead of perhaps just noting her death, were more than a world away. No one noticed her preoccupation over the fuss Bilbo was making as he skimmed the liability section. Lucy skimmed down to it herself, curious to see what had him in a tizzy. _“Incineration?”_ he inquired, peering into the dim dining room from the hallway.

“Oh, aye, he’ll melt the flesh off your bones in the blink o’ an eye,” Bofur said firmly. Bilbo huffed for air.

“Y’alright, laddie?” Balin asked, smiling.

“Oh, yes. Feel a bit faint.” He propped his hands on his knees.

“Think furnace, with wings,” Bofur said brightly, standing.

“I – I – I need air . . .”

“Gandalf,” Lucy said warningly, since the wizard did not have a room crammed with dwarves between himself and the hobbit, and she did.

“Flash of light, searin’ pain, and poof! You’re nothin’ more’n a pile o’ ash!” Bofur barreled on, his tone too kindly for him to be causing the hobbit distress on purpose. He was just oblivious.

Bilbo straightened, let out a long breath. Lucy relaxed back into her chair. “No,” the hobbit said, and pitched forward quite suddenly. The action sent Lucy scrambling forward over the table top, hardly taking care to avoid stepping on fingers as Gandalf muttered, “Oh, very _helpful,_ Bofur.”

Bilbo was fine, of course – he’d fallen nowhere near hard enough to hurt his head, which was really the only concern with fainting, and he was already coming around as Lucy dragged a chair forward and hefted his legs up onto it. “What’ll that do, then?” Bofur inquired, watching curiously, his fellows behind him struggling to get into the doorway all at once.

“Face is red, elevate the head; face is white, hoist the legs high,” Lucy said over her shoulder.

"Very professional,” someone Lucy couldn’t see muttered, but Oin rejoined that it was important for healer’s advice to be catchy, else no one would ever remember them, and the whole thing collapsed into an argument again as the dwarves slowly leaked out of the dining room, fanning out again.

Bilbo, for his part, wanted only to sit alone in his front parlor (the ‘alone’ part was emphasized) and have a cup of tea, which Lucy poured for him before leaving him to Gandalf. The wizard was obviously unhappy that Bilbo had been insisting, since he came to, that he was not one for adventures.

That left her to either retire early – though it wasn’t really early, anymore – or join the dwarves in the back parlor. She chose the second option. She had yet to be completely sold on this quest, though she would hate to disappoint Gandalf, and if she was setting off with these people in the morning, she wanted to know at least one or two of them beyond just names.

The only available seat left was beside Dwalin, but she took it gladly. He was somewhat surprised to find her sitting down beside him; the seat at his side had not been left empty by accident or oversight. “I like your tattoos,” she said, which was usually a safe opener with anyone who had ink. “Or at least I think I do.” She smiled. “It’d be easier to tell if I could understand them.”

Dwalin looked down at her, surprised again, but Lucy didn’t see, gazing into the fire, her left hand sliding up under her left sleeve. She fingered the scar tissue for a moment, thoughtfully. The old warrior couldn’t think of anything to say, so he, too, looked at the fire, and then cast around for someone to join their silence, someone to break it, but everyone else was either gazing at the flames or already speaking to someone else. He looked down at his lap, letting out a long, annoyed sigh, and then his eyes caught on Lucy’s fidgeting fingers. The script there was unfamiliar to Dwalin; he couldn’t even guess what language it spoke for. But the scar beneath the ink was far more comprehensible. It was a burn, a few years old, still angry pink where it hadn’t yet faded to silver and white. And it was in such a place that it could not easily have been earned by accident.

Lucy knew that her movements had dislodged her sleeve, and Dwalin could see the mark, but although that hadn’t been her intention, she didn’t care.

“They’re of battles, mostly,” Dwalin offered gruffly. “People lost.”

Lucy nodded. “This one tells me what to do,” she says, glancing down at it. “In case I ever forget.” Though, from the hard set of her jaw, Dwalin doubted that she ever _would_ forget. That was what tattoos were, though – reminders.

It was hard to think of a lighter topic of conversation. Everybody seemed a bit maudlin - the late hour, the firelight, and the quest before them all weighing heavily. Lucy stopped toying with her scar to fiddle with the uneven edges of the paper on which her contract was written. People’s eyes were distant, thinking ahead or maybe behind, envisioning the families at home waiting for them. Lucy wondered if her family still waited for her. If it were her waiting, and her brother who had been lost, she thought that by now she would have given up. But it was hard to be sure – she might have held out hope, until now, until she died, even, and he could have been doing that even as she thought of him.

It was impossible to say, and she knew she might never know, might never have to chance to ask. Probably wouldn’t, even if this borderline suicide mission of a quest didn’t kill her. It was probably time for her to accept that, to make her peace with her fate, and find a place in this world, but while her mind supported that plan, her heart resisted.

She could have found a quiet moment to discuss it with Gandalf, who was as wise as he was unorthodox, but he shipped out tomorrow with the band of dwarves. If she stayed, she’d be left at Bag End with Bilbo, to rest up as she told him she would, maybe for a week, maybe two, and then she’d be forging out into the wilderness again, chasing legends and half-forgotten myths mixed with her own suspicions and calculations.

The humming was so low in pitch, and began so quietly, that she couldn’t pinpoint the moment it started, but the sound swelled like a wave in the room, slowly gaining volume until Lucy could feel the thrum in her sternum. She lifted her head, curious, looking at the serious faces around her.

Thorin was the first to sing, his voice smooth, mournful. It intensified the persistent ache in Lucy’s chest, already made stronger by her ruminations. “ _Far over the misty mountains cold . . . to dungeons deep, and caverns old. We must away . . . ere break of day . . . to find our long-forgotten gold._ ”

More voices rose with his, then, layering together so perfectly that Lucy felt goosebumps rise over every inch of her skin. She caught sight of Kili, looking somber in way that she already recognized as uncharacteristic, his brother a half a pace behind him looking just as grim.

“ _The pines were roaring . . . up on the height. The winds were moaning . . . in the night. The fire was red . . . it flamed and spread. The trees like torches . . . blazed with light._ ”

Lucy blinked as the singing subsided into humming, dimly surprised to feel a tear slip from the corner of her eye. She touched fingertips to it without thinking, dabbing it away without intending to.

This quest wasn’t a grab for gold and fame, or even a king’s attempt to regain a cold throne. It was a desperate bid to reclaim a lost home, a lost culture. It was the last hope of a homeless people, cut adrift.

Lucy could understand that. Her heart ached with her own pain, but pain was easily transferable – it overcame her with empathy at unexpected moments. When suffering, it was easier to understand the suffering of others. And while she could not stop her own pain, not yet, maybe not ever, she _could_ have a hand in the cessation of the Dwarves’. That was worth doing, especially since lately she had only wandered aimlessly about.

She signed the contract quietly, as the company began to bunk down for the night, pressing the bundle of folded paper into Balin’s hands. He beamed at her, his fingers wrapping around hers to squeeze. “There’s a good lass,” he said warmly. “Best get to bed; we’re moving at first light.”

Lucy tried to follow the advice, but it wasn’t as easy as Balin seemed to think. There were her things to pack, few though they were, and Huckleberry to go over by lantern light, ascertaining that the pony was healthy and ready to ride, a goodbye note to write for Bilbo, and nerves to dispel once she finally was tucked into bed. It seemed that she remained awake for hours, gazing at the stars out the guest room window, before she finally fell asleep, and it felt like only minutes before she awakened to see the pearly gray sky of dawn beyond the glass.

With everything packed, her only really tasks were dressing, eating, and saddling Huckleberry. Lucy dressed methodically but quickly, her motions seamlessly efficient after years of daily practice. Underclothes. A dark raspberry-red wool shirt, long sleeves and high neckline, a good color for stains, easily replaced. Thick wool socks. Brown trousers, one of her few pairs which didn't need mending at the moment. Boots, brown leather with good soles, straps that buckled down, oiled waterproof, good for riding or running. Jerkin, leather, wear beginning to show around the seams. It had many useful pockets, some obvious, some secret, and was discretely lined with steel plates. The leather was well cared-for, but ghosts of failed murder attempts still showed as pale scars. It laced in the back, and she immediately felt safer with the leather straps done up tight. Snug. Contained. Protected.

Next were greaves, to protect her shins and knees with similar layers of metal and leather, and then vambraces, metal-plated leather which covered her from wrists to elbows and had hidden sheaths for thin knives built right into them. They and her knuckle-dusters buckled together nicely. The leather gave a satisfying creak when she flexed her fists, metal caps tightening pleasantly across her knuckles, and they were perfectly comfortable with her hands relaxed.

Lucy considered shearing off her hair, but instead orchestrated her usual tight French braid, winding a spiked leather strap in with the hair to make a nasty surprise for anyone who grabbed it in a fight. The iron spikes were almost needle-thin, and just short enough to go unnoticed against the dark of her hair unless they were looked for.

Her pack, quiver, and bow all went on her back, a wide belt with numerous pouches and several knives (some hidden) at her waist. Her sword she buckled onto her pack with her bedroll, disliking the extra weight at her belt. She only wore it when necessary, and the Shire wasn't the sort of neighborhood that made it necessary.

The dwarves were awake when she walked into the back parlor to join them, some eating, some buckling outerwear and weapons into place. “Well, look at ye all kitted out,” Bofur said approvingly, looking her up and down. “Dwalin! Take a gander at this, ye and the lass’ve knuckle-dusters to match!”

Most of the Company looked up at that, and Lucy held up a hand so they could see. The younger dwarves seemed particularly taken with her appearance, Ori staring slightly open-mouthed, Kili and Fili looking her over admiringly. Lucy returned the scrutiny. Princes or not, the older two were as well-equipped as she, their gear just as worn with honest use, and they seemed to be in decent-enough shape, although it was hard to judge fitness by simple appearance. Ori seemed to be wearing mostly knitted clothing, and in layers that made it difficult to determine the actual size and shape of him.

“I thought ye said ye prefer what Nature gave ye,” Gloin said wryly, as a few comments were made on Lucy’s weaponry and general appearance.

“I do,” Lucy rejoined, “but no problem with augmentation, is there?” There was a smattering of chuckles at that, and then they were out the door (stopping in the kitchen to further ravage the remains of Bilbo’s pantry), into the early sunshine, where Lucy laughed to see the havoc that seventeen ponies and Gandalf’s horse had managed to wreak on the tiny paddock behind Bag End.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lucy's pony is named Huckleberry because Mark Twain is her younger brother's favorite author.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaand they're off!  
> Music: "Mountain Sound" by Of Monsters and Men on the road.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: some violence against an orc and a warg, some post-traumatic stress.

“Who’d like to bet that Bilbo comes after us when he wakes?” Balin asked as they all set to the work of saddling and packing their steeds.  
“I’ll bet he doesn’t,” Dwalin said gruffly. “Lad’s got no bones for the wilderness.”  
“What of you, Lucy?” Ori asked shyly, struggling to cinch his saddle into place. “Do you think he’ll come or not?”  
Lucy shrugged, gently shouldering him aside to do the strap up for him. “Hard to say. If I were the gambling sort, I’d hedge my bets.”  
“Glad you’re not the gambling sort, then,” Dori said dryly, making Ori laugh.  
They set out with bets, morning complaints, and quick breakfasts still flying – Balin mentioning the ache in his back, Nori tossing Oin a spare biscuit, Gandalf, Kili, and Fili debating whether or not a bet regarding Bilbo’s decision should be stacked.  
“I say even odds,” Lucy contributed. “Bilbo’s a reticent fellow, sure, and used to creature comforts, but he’s always been so eager to hear my stories whenever I visit him. I think the lure of adventure of his own may be enough to draw him out. The question is only whether or not his fear and his sense of propriety have overridden it.”  
“An astute observation,” Gandalf agreed.  
“Even odds, then,” Fili said, collecting money from both his brother and Gandalf. “Seems fair, unless, of course, the pair of you are harboring inside information.”  
Lucy laughed. “Yes, Bilbo’s secretly a dragon slayer,” she joked. “And quite an accomplished mountaineer.”  
Kili eyed her speculatively. “Are you either?” he asked. “Among your many talents?”  
To his surprise, her smile shrank. “Yes to the mountaineer, I suppose,” she said, looking down at her pony and petting her mane. “And I’m a fair hand at hiking and climbing, at least.”  
Gandalf smoothly changed the subject, knowing that to Lucy, mountains were a complex subject – they represented her greatest hope, and her most devastating misfortune. He and the princes were engaged in a friendly debate regarding the quality of various pipeweeds when the first cries could be heard behind them.  
“Wait! Wait!”  
“Is that Bilbo?” Lucy said, turning around in the saddle to look back along the path.  
“I can’t think who else it would be,” Gandalf said, beaming. “Good show, Mr. Baggins!”  
And sure enough, it was Bilbo running into sight around the curve of the path, contract flapping in his hand like a long white flag. “I signed it!” he yelled, breathless, as the Company came to a stop. “I signed it.”  
He passed it up to Balin, who gave the document a cursory inspection and then beamed down at the hobbit. “Everything appears to be in order,” he said, folding it up. “Welcome, Master Baggins, to the Company of Thorin Oakenshield.”  
There were cries of welcome and some laughter, Lucy grinning at Bilbo from her seat atop Huckleberry. She was happy to have another friend along – counting Gandalf as her first, and confidently.  
Thorin looked less than pleased. “Give him a pony,” he ordered.  
Bilbo’s smile dropped off his face. “Oh, no, that won’t be necessary,” he said, making Lucy laugh. “I assure, I’ve done my fair share of walking holidays –”  
“It’s just a pony, Bilbo,” she called back, grinning.  
“No, no, I –” he let out a sharp cry as Bifur and Bofur lifted him bodily by each shoulder, dropping him onto one of the pack ponies as it passed beneath him. The animal was so well-trained – or perhaps so used to traveling with dwarves – that it didn’t even twitch at the surprise. Lucy heeled Huckleberry to fall in beside Bilbo, beaming at him.  
“Come on, Nori, pay up!” Gloin called up the line, and a small, clinking sack came whizzing through the air. More bets were paid in short order, Lucy fighting the urge to duck away from the small projectiles that passed too close for comfort.  
“What’s that about?” Bilbo asked.  
“They took wagers on whether or not you’d turn up,” Gandalf explained, unbothered. “Most of them bet you wouldn’t.”  
“I gave you even odds,” Lucy said when Bilbo looked to her, wide-eyed, for corroboration or perhaps sympathy.  
“And what did you think?” Bilbo asked Gandalf.  
The wizard only had a moment to hem and haw before Kili’s flew his way, one gloved hand darting up to catch it. He chuckled. “My dear fellow, I never doubted you for a second.”  
Bilbo sneezed and began muttering about having a reaction to the horse hair. Lucy raised an eyebrow at Gandalf over Bilbo’s head, and the wizard shrugged, clearly as amused as she by the display of fussiness. She supposed Bilbo would overcome it soon enough. Or else he’d abandon them at the nearest town. Or drive them all crazy.  
“. . . no, no, wait, wait, stop!” Bilbo cried, holding up a hand. The Company came to a halt. “We have to turn around!”  
“What on Earth is the matter?” Gandalf asked, eyeing him.  
“I forgot my handkerchief,” Bilbo replied. Lucy cringed, giving Gandalf another look. He looked as chagrined as she felt.  
Bofur grinned and tossed back a rag ripped right off his tunic. “Here,” he said cheerfully, “use this.”  
Bilbo caught the dingy once-yellow square with obvious distaste, and Lucy was relieved when the dwarves just laughed, Thorin giving the order to move on.  
The shuffle of everyone getting back into gear left Lucy with the three young dwarves – Fili, Kili, and Ori. She was relieved, since she at least knew all of them by name. “How old are you, Ori?” she asked curiously, as the ponies walked on.  
He blushed. “Fifty-two,” he replied.  
Lucy did a quick internal calculation – proportionate to his overall lifespan, Ori would be about fifteen if he were human. “Oh,” she said, smiling, “wee lamb.”  
Fili and Kili laughed, and Ori took it with an unhurt smile, clearly used to such ribbing. He had two older brothers, after all.  
“What do you do, then?” Lucy asked.  
“I’m a scribe,” he said eagerly. “Already a journeyman. I hope I can use my records of this quest for my mastery.”  
Lucy thought of her brother with a pang, a perfect photographic memory rising to the surface of her mind – head bent over a book as he tried to read the call number on the spine for reshelving, the late afternoon sunlight falling through the library window to gild him in gold, catching all the stray fuzz on one of his many sweater vests so he seemed to have a slight halo.  
“And you two are princes,” she said to Fili and Kili, ignoring her own discomfort. “I imagine that’s a full-time job.”  
“Oh, aye,” Fili agreed. “Especially if you’re as dense as my brother.” His grin was framed in perfectly by the golden braids in his mustache.  
“There are worse things to be,” Kili said, unruffled. He grinned, too. “Like boring. What do you do, Lucy?”  
It was not an uncommon question, but Lucy had yet to find an answer that was true, but not too true, and which did not invite further questions. “Well, I had a bit of a rough patch when I was young, so I took up the fighting,” she said slowly. “I studied at a university to better myself, and then I was a physician’s apprentice for two years. Hit another rough patch and took up the traveling, and that’s what I’ve been ever since, past few years. A traveler.”  
The princes both looked rightfully skeptical, but Ori was enthralled. “But you’re so young,” he said, and then flushed. “I mean, you know . . .”  
“I do know, Master Scribe,” Lucy said, smiling at him. “No offense taken.”  
“Ori’s good at that,” Kili warned her, shooting the younger dwarf a grin. “Putting his foot in it. Dori says he’ll grow out of it, but . . .”  
“But then again, Nori still gets funny on occasion, so there’s no saying,” Fili concluded. “As for Kili, he’s too old now to grow out of much of anything.”  
The brothers quickly fell into a brief argument about each other’s various faults and whether or not they were a by-product of their ages (Fili eighty-one and Kili seventy-six, which boggled Lucy’s mind), but no blows were traded, so all in all, it couldn’t really be called a fight.  
They spent an hour or so teaching Lucy “Blunt the Knives”, their voices occasionally joined by those of the other dwarves, ringing clear and loud off the hillsides to echo back. Lucy had a high voice, clear and bright like the peal of a bell or a flute, and just as strong, which surprised the others – dwarves had low voices, even the dams, and those few whose voices were as high as Lucy’s usually couldn’t sing well for that very reason. That a high voice could be just as resonant as a low one was surprising, particularly to Kili, and for that very reason, he liked her singing quite well.  
She taught the younger three dwarves “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” in return, although her translation was a little clumsy and didn’t rhyme as well as it could have, if she’d sat down to the task instead of doing it off the top of her head. They still took to it, though, shouting the bizarre name at the top of their lungs and falling to pieces laughing over it.  
“You must be from quite far away, Lucy,” Ori observed when they’d tired of singing and rode in companionable silence. “I’ve never heard a name like that before. Or your pony’s.”  
Lucy glanced down at Huckleberry. “You’re right,” she said, letting silence rise up. Fili and Kili both glanced at her, curious, and then each other, but kept their questions to themselves. 

 

By the end of the day, Lucy was comfortably tired. She’d gotten to know Ori, Kili, and Fili pretty well, learned a bit about the dwarves’ current residence in Ered Luin, known to humans as the Blue Mountains – more than a refugee camp but less than a real home, was her understanding of it. She also had “Blunt the Knives” echoing around her head in an endless litany. Her hope for the evening was that it would be gone when she woke up. Kili seemed to have the same problem – she heard him humming “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” to himself more than once as they all set up camp.  
Lucy wasn’t wildly happy with their campsite, which was secure, sheltered, and near water, but also firmly on a mountainside. She tried not to think about it too much as Bombur made dinner, other members of the Company talking or playing quiet games. After dinner, she watched Nori and Dwalin play a few rounds of a game called Fox and Geese which, to her best understanding, resembled both checkers and tic-tac-toe. “Will ye play a round, lass?” Dwalin asked when he and Nori had reached a total impasse, the redheaded dwarf lounging against a boulder to watch his pipe smoke dissipate in the night air.  
“I don’t think I can,” Lucy said. “I wasn’t really paying attention.”  
Dwalin nodded as though this made perfect sense to him – watching people intently without really watching them – and instead they discussed the tattoo artists scattered across Middle Earth. They’d had one in common, the dam who’d done a piece on Dwalin’s back and one on Lucy’s left foot. It was on the underside of her heel (which had made aftercare of the new ink a nightmare), she told him, but no specifics, and Dwalin didn’t seem curious. Lucy found that refreshing. Most people knew better than to pry at other’s business, but she could still see curiosity when she told her vague life story, when eyes lingered on her left hand where there wasn’t so much as a stump left of her finger, when she walked into a tavern whose patronage was otherwise entirely male.  
Dwalin turned in for the night, so Lucy moved to sit by the fire with Fili and Kili. They greeted her quietly, aware of the others asleep all around them, but Bilbo still got up and wandered over to the ponies, clearly unable to sleep, either. Even Gandalf was awake, puffing silently on his pipe.  
A rough, uneven cry rang out – Lucy thought it was a hawk or an eagle, some kind of bird of prey – and Bilbo wheeled around to face them, his small face urgent. “What was that?”  
Kili looked out over the valley, warily. “Orcs,” he said. Lucy frowned at him, but he glanced back and winked at her. Messing with poor Bilbo’s head, then, which she supposed was better than Kili really being that stupid. She sat back to let the prank play its course.  
“Orcs?” Bilbo repeated, running back over to them in agitated little steps. At the word, Thorin twitched awake, siting up from his uncomfortable-looking position semi-reclined against a boulder.  
“Throat-cutters,” Kili mock-explained.  
“There’ll be dozens of them out there,” Fili chimed in, puffing in his pipe. “The lowlands will be crawling with them.”  
“They strike in the wee small hours when everyone’s asleep,” Kili continued seriously. “Quick and quiet, no cries. Just lots of blood.”  
Bilbo looked around fearfully, and Kili half-turned to look back at Fili and Lucy. The brothers broke into chuckles, and Lucy relaxed, glad the joke was over. She hadn’t wanted to be a stick in the mud (even if Bilbo was easy prey, a bit too easy for her liking), but the mere mention of orcs had her blood pumping faster. Her scars throbbed.  
Apparently, Thorin shared her sentiment. “Do you think that’s funny?” he challenged, and the princes’ smiles dropped clean off their faces. “Do you think a night raid by orcs is a joke?”  
Kili looked particularly hangdog. “We didn’t mean anything by it,” he said, glancing up at his uncle through his shaggy hair.  
“No, you didn’t,” Thorin said, and while there was nothing unduly harsh in his tone, Lucy could still see Kili flinch, just barely. “You know nothing of the world.”  
“Don’t mind him, laddie,” Balin consoled Kili, who was watching Thorin pace near the edge of the campsite with the same mournful look in his brown eyes that Lucy more usually saw on puppy dogs. “He has more reason than most to hate orcs.”  
The tale he proceeded to tell them was a dark one. Lucy rubbed the scar on her left hand thoughtfully as she listened, suppressing a shudder at the mention of Azog. Her own losses had been terrible, but conditional; it was still very slightly, potentially possible for her to regain her family. She couldn’t imagine losing them in one go, as Thorin had, without even the weak consolation that slim chance offered her. She almost didn’t notice the dwarves rousing from their sleep, slowly rising, all eyes on Thorin’s back. “. . . and I thought, there is one that I could follow,” Balin concluded solemnly. “There is one that I could call king.”  
Lucy remained seated with Bilbo and Gandalf. She felt no need to pledge her allegiance, painful as the tale and serious as Balin’s devotion were, and she was unsure if, did she ever feel that need, her gesture would be well-received. Time would tell on both counts.  
Thorin looked mournful when he turned to face his Company, looking very real – a grieving son and grandson, a commander who had lost thousands of soldiers, not just a critical dwarf with a cool gaze anymore. Lucy regarded him thoughtfully.  
“And the Pale Orc?” Bilbo asked, intruding on the moment of silence. “What happened to him?”  
“He slunk back into the hole whence he came,” Thorin said vehemently, striding towards his bedroll. “That filth died of his wounds long ago.”  
Lucy’s brow furrowed, her mouth opening, but Gandalf caught her eye and gave a quick shake of his head, Balin shooting her a look of mild alarm and glancing towards his king.  
She kept quiet. It was no business of hers if she had seen an orc Thorin thought was dead. Balin was clearly both loyal and loving towards the dwarf, and if he thought the information best kept from the king, it was not her place to disagree.  
But the knowledge didn’t sit easy with her, and she slept restlessly.

 

The first few days of travel passed easily and quickly. Lucy modified an old road trip favorite, teaching Fili, Kili, and Ori “Ninety-Nine Tankards of Ale on the Bar.”  
“Has anyone ever sung it all the way through?” Kili asked curiously.  
“Rarely,” Lucy said. “I haven’t. You mostly just sing it to annoy people, really.”  
“Excellent,” Kili approved, grinning, and Lucy laughed. That was all it took, and in retrospect she should have known better. She tapped out at eighty-six tankards of ale, feeling sheepish for the disgruntled looks and irritation-tense shoulders up the line, but the young dwarves were bound and determined to run the count all the way down.  
Oin abandoned his ear-horn, jamming the hearing aid deep into one of his pockets. “Lucky bastard,” Nori muttered.  
“Oh, to be so young,” Gandalf said, unruffled by the incessant, repetitive singing. He hummed along, pleased to hear Lucy’s laughter as she tried to bid her comrades-in-age to stop. She was a serious girl, Lucy, for all that she was prone to smiling, made somber by her various misfortunes. It had been one of his hopes, when he thought to add her to the Company, that new friendships would do her good.  
Thorin cracked at seventy-three tankards of ale. “ENOUGH!” he roared from the head of the line, his pony wheeling so he could glower back at them. Lucy rocked back in her saddle a few degrees, startled, but Ori cowered like a scolded puppy. Fili and Kili exchanged delighted looks, the both of them snickering, just nephews thrilled to have peeved their uncle into a reaction.  
It was Kili, of course, who tried to start up “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt”, and Thorin yelled back that there would be no more singing that day.  
That left talking, quiet spoken games, or sightseeing to pass the time. They kept mostly to the latter, none of them so young that they could not entertain themselves with their own thoughts for a few hours at a time. Lucy studied the dwarves at much as the landscape, fascinated by the unfamiliar patterns stamped into leather and metal, the elaborate braids, the stern, craggy faces. Her favorite subjects of observation were Dwalin (interesting tattoos), Nori (interesting hairstyle), Bifur (interesting behavior, probably due to the old head wound) and Fili (just pretty), but she soon found her attention drifting more to the darker prince. Fili was handsome enough, to be sure, but his brother was far more interesting. Fili rode as sedately as his uncle, looking regal as a lion with his neat gold braids, strong features, and proud bearing, but Kili looked around with unflagging interest, emotions crossing his face like a silent recital of his thoughts. He occasionally chuckled to himself at some private joke or funny memory, drawing a smile from his brother every time. Lucy knew enough to know – or could have learned just by looking around – the Kili was an unusual-looking dwarf, from his narrow nose to his (comparably) scant beard. He was tall, Lucy would guess just under five feet in height, and while he wasn’t slender, his brother was of the same height and broader, so in comparison Kili looked smaller. The unkempt nature of his hair meant that he constantly had to shake the shaggy mane out of his eyes, a quick, impatient move that he didn’t even notice anymore. His walk was a loose-limbed amble, unlike the staid bearing of the other dwarves, and he was always so ready to smile, humor glinting in his eyes even before something funny happened, grinning easily at Lucy when she caught his eye.  
Fili had the showier looks, but his brother was the one you looked at twice.  
“Like what you see?” he teased, when Lucy had let her gaze linger a little too long.  
She shrugged, deliberately nonchalant. “Only as much as I like Dwalin,” she said, the older dwarf turning around in his saddle at the sound of his name, his features already settled into a frown. She gave him an easy smile, and he turned around again.  
Kili looked suitably startled, Fili laughing at his expression. “She’s only doing what I do,” Ori explained, busy sketching away. Lucy suspected that his knit gloves were gray more from charcoal than dye. “Looking and learning.”  
Fili stood in his stirrups and leaned over to get a look at the sketchpad. “And what have you learned from the back of Mister Dwalin’s head, Ori?”  
Dwalin turned around again, once more suspicious. “Ye’re talkin’ about me back there,” he said gruffly. It wasn’t a question.  
“All good things,” Lucy assured him breezily. “Ori drew you, see?”  
Ori helpfully held up his drawing pad. Lucy turned to look back at it. The sketch was very good. Satisfied, Dwalin gave a grunt, and then nudged his pony into hurrying up the line, away from the youngsters.  
Feeling eyes on her, Lucy turned to meet Kili’s gaze. “Like what you see?” she asked archly.  
“I’m looking at your bow,” he lied, and threw in a taunt and a smile to make it believable. “Wondering if you can really pull that weight.”  
Lucy arched a brow at him, only letting the insult slide because she knew it was a joke. “Not only can I pull it, princeling, but I’d bet I can outshoot you.”  
“Hey-oh,” Fili called, grinning. “I hear a challenge, brother. Can’t back down from a challenge.”  
Kili really couldn’t back down from a challenge, for his own competitive nature, even if his skill with a bow was one of his precious few points of pride. Of course, if he took it, and Lucy bested him, he could no longer really boast of his un-bested, un-competed prowess (an exaggeration, to be sure, but one that he so far had gotten away with).  
Several of the oldest dwarves nearest them had now turned around in the saddle to watch him expectantly. So did Lucy.  
“Never would turn one down, brother,” Kili said cheerfully, grinning. “After we make camp tonight, Lucy?”  
“You’re on,” Lucy replied, satisfied, and looked forward again.  
Kili studied her profile, more subtly this time. He did like what he saw, or he thought he did. It was hard to say, when she looked so unlike a dam – much too slender and without even a hint of a beard, of course, with what of her body fat there was relegated to . . . certain areas, instead of evenly distributed in the more sensible manner dwarves’ bodies favored. Her nose was very small, in keeping with her race, her jaw rounded instead of squared, her chin small and round. Her eyes were an unusual shade of dark green, unprotected from rock dust and grit by suitably thick brows, and her fingers, loosely gripping her reins, were alarmingly slender, fragile-looking, if thoroughly callused.  
But none of that was bad. Just very different. And Kili tended to like different, new, exciting, which probably explained why he kept finding his gaze on Lucy, the same way she shifted her attention from dwarf to dwarf. Even Ori spent a good quarter hour under her silent scrutiny, and the poor kid wasn’t much to look at. He jumped violently when he noticed Lucy’s attention on him, charcoal streaking across the sketchpad as he blushed.  
“Sorry,” Lucy said as he scrubbed ferociously at his drawing. “I didn’t mean to startle you. You just remind me of my brother, is all.”  
Ori brightened at the words, smiling eagerly. “Oh?”  
“He’s a librarian,” Lucy explained. Or he was six years ago.  
“Older or younger?” Ori asked, happily putting his charcoal to the page again.  
“I’m older. Three years.” She would have sworn on any holy artifact that she could remember the first time she held Peter, though of course people always jumped to tell her that she was too young at the time. But she did remember, she was sure of it. The warm damp heft of him in her small arms, which trembled under his slight weight, his tiny hand curled in the tail of her left pigtail.  
“Dori has nearly a century on me,” Ori said plaintively, frowning at his paper. “He never lets me forget it.”  
Lucy gave her head a little shake, as if clearing water from her ears. “A century?” she repeated.  
“It happens,” Fili explained. “Some parents believe a larger age gap makes for well-adjusted children.”  
“Ask Nori what he thinks of that,” Kili said, smirking, and Fili and Ori both laughed. Lucy didn’t know much about Nori, but she had learned that he had an extensive criminal background, so having fifty-odd years between him and each of his brothers had clearly done little to make him well-adjusted.  
“May I ask a personal question, Lucy?” Ori asked shyly, emboldened by the knowledge that he reminded her of her younger brother.  
“You may ask anything you like,” Lucy replied, smiling. “I might not answer, though.”  
“Oh, of course,” Ori chuckled. He cleared his throat. “How – how did you lose your finger?”  
Fili and Kili cringed, knowing from their lessons that human did not brag about their injuries and scars as dwarves did, but Kili couldn’t help his curiosity, hoping she would answer anyway.  
“It was bitten off,” Lucy said simply. Normally, she hated the question, but Ori was just young enough to have the excuse of not knowing better.  
The scribe blushed in horror. “Oh – oh. I’m sorry.”  
“It was some time ago,” Lucy said, smiling at him. “And it wasn’t an important finger.”  
“You should ask Bofur about the axe in Bifur’s head,” Kili suggested, to fill the silence. “I’d say you should ask Bifur, but no one understands what he says half the time.”  
“Because of the axe in his head,” Fili added, helpfully. “He can only speak Old Khuzdul and the sign language.”  
“Is it an orc axe or a goblin axe?” Kili asked, frowning. “I can never remember.”  
“How could you forget?” Fili demanded, and they quickly fell to bickering. Lucy had already entitled all of their disagreements The Never-Ending Fraternal Argument of Indeterminate Subject, though she had yet to share the name with anyone else. No matter what the princes argued about, it always had the same cant to it, and she remembered well her pointless, circular fights with her own brother, though they had them rarely, and not daily like Fili and Kili. It never really mattered what siblings said they fought about; it was always the same fight, really, living out countless reincarnations. Oddly, doing so had made her feel closer to Peter; it was like a dance, or an old walking path, proving that you knew the way, you still remembered the lines, trodding carefully in the footprints from before. Proof that you knew your sibling, knew them inside and out, knew your place beside them. And, yes, that you knew them well enough to push every button they had.  
Thankfully, Fili and Kili didn’t wind each other up; they just debated until they ran out of steam, and rode quietly once again.

 

They stopped at midday beside a wide stream, where it ran broad and shallow over a pebbled, rocky bottom. “Looks good for bathing,” Dwalin opined, dunking in a hand. “Shallow enough the sun’s warmed it.”  
“Oh, thank Mahal,” sighed Dori, whose fastidiousness manifested in any number of ways. Dwarves, as a whole, preferred to be clean, like any other of the free peoples, and it had been long enough since they left Bag End that everyone had begun to feel gamey, even those among them who were slacker with their hygiene.  
Half of the dwarves were out of half of their clothes inside of a minute, Bilbo standing in their midst with a look of well-mannered hobbit shock on his small face. He scrambled up a large boulder on the grassy shore to perch beside Gandalf, who showed no interest in bathing and was instead packing the bowl of his pipe. Lucy quickly busied herself with Huckleberry, inspecting the pony’s feet for rocks.  
“Don’t you want to wash off, Lucy?” Ori asked, looked considerably smaller without several layers of knitwear. Dwarves were, by and large, and unselfconscious people, with very different views on modesty than humans.  
“I don’t think I need it, yet,” she replied, now very busy checking the various buckles and straps of Huckleberry’s gear.  
“We’re keepin’ our smallclothes on,” Balin coaxed, and Bofur promptly yanked his back up to his waist, the words catching him with his smallclothes around his knees. “There’s no offense to your modesty here, lass.”  
“There’s no offense to anyone’s modesty,” Kili said, surprised.  
“Humans are different,” Fili reminded him, as if any idiot could fail to notice or remember the fact.  
“It’s not my modesty I’m worried about,” Lucy said, a little testily. Her skin itched with sweat and dirt, but she wouldn’t take off her shirt in front of anyone else. She couldn’t. Not if she could help it. The idea made her skin crawl more than the feel of her own filth. “Go starkers for all I care. I just don’t want a bath.”  
There was obviously more to it, confused looks exchanged between the dwarves, but Bofur ended the moment by body-checking Bombur into the water, where he howled and splashed, and then Kili launched himself on his brother and it all quickly devolved into a water fight, which in turn morphed into proper bathing, once everyone had lost the energy to wrestle.  
Lucy joined Gandalf and Bilbo on the rock. “I should think that there would be a nice place to bath upstream,” the wizard said after a few moments, gazing thoughtfully at the clouds. “Beyond those trees. It’s difficult to say, of course, since it’s out of sight.”  
The human glanced towards the dwarves again, but they were talking and playing, wholly distracted, and she took the opportunity to grab her things and duck out of sight behind the trees.  
She kept her own smallclothes on, not for modesty’s sake, but so that she could be back into her outwear inside a few seconds if some well-meaning soul came looking for her. The sun felt too hot on her back when she bathed, like it glowed in the light, and she hurried so that she could cover it up again, back on the rock with the wizard and the hobbit before anyone had noticed that she was gone, only the water dripping from her rebraided hair evidence that she had gone.

 

Their campsite by the disintegrating farmstead that night set Lucy’s nerves on edge. She kept sniffing, hard, trying to scent the air. Several of the older dwarves noticed the odd behavior, but it was Balin who finally addressed it, offering a handkerchief.  
“I have my own, thank you,” Lucy said, giving him a distracted smile.  
“Yer not a bloodhound, lass,” Dwalin observed. “What’re ye up to?”  
Lucy shook her head. “It feels off here. Oftentimes, intuition is based off of information that one’s mind puts together before one does, especially if it’s information not from one’s eyes, because the free peoples are so reliant on their eyes.”  
“I don’t think you’ll be able to smell what went wrong here,” Gandalf said, nudging a shard of a ceramic pot with his foot. It was half-buried in the ground, grown over by grass. “It happened some time ago. Although you do have a younger nose than I . . . and I don’t much care for this place, either.” He turned and went to discuss the matter with Thorin, but only minutes later, he came stomping by again.  
“Everything alright?” Bilbo queried. “Gandalf? Where are you going?”  
“To seek the company of the only one around here who’s got any sense,” he half-shouted, striding off down the path.  
“Well, who’s that?” Bilbo called after him.  
“Myself!”  
The hobbit looked at Lucy over the nose of the pony he was unsaddling, bewildered. “We’re sensible,” she said, amused by the hurt, confused look on his face even as she looked over her shoulder at Gandalf’s retreating back. “He didn’t mean that.”  
Giving up on the matter of her intuition and the campsite, Lucy busied herself setting the fire. It hardly mattered whether or not she could pinpoint what about the camp was giving her the willies, because Thorin quickly already ignored Gandalf’s sense of foreboding, and the wizard had far more clout than Lucy for any number of reasons.  
“That was right clever, what you said,” Ori offered shyly, standing awkwardly beside her as she nursed her bundle of kindling into flame. “About intuition.”  
“Thank you, Ori,” she said, puffing on the tiny fire before nestling it beneath the carefully stacked wood. The flames began to lick at the larger pieces of fuel. “My grandfather always told me I think far too much, but it does have its benefits. As I’m sure you know.”  
They sat together was Bombur prepared and served a stew, Lucy watching the path in the direction that Gandalf had gone after his argument with Thorin. She didn’t like the idea of the wizard out alone with the back of her mind still itching that this place wasn’t safe, and she certainly didn’t like the Company sitting in an unsafe place without Gandalf’s protection. Ori watched her tug her gauntlets back on after eating, but didn’t want to ask.  
It was only shortly thereafter that Fili and Kili returned to camp at a run. At the sight, Lucy rolled up onto her feet from a reclining position, reaching for her dagger. The others had similar reactions. “Why are you here?” Thorin asked, frowning at them. “Who’s watching the ponies?”  
“Bilbo – There’s a troll camp, they took the ponies, and Bilbo tried to get them back –”  
“He’s the burglar after all, and so light and quick we thought –”  
Thorin was already striding off in the direction Fili was pointing, the others hurrying after them. Lucy fell in behind Ori, and then stopped, looking down the trail after Gandalf. He couldn’t have gone far, surely, he had just gone around the bend to smoke a pipe in peace. If he’d been walking this whole time, he’d be too far away to reach quickly, but if Thorin had really angered him, it was possible.  
Glancing towards the dwarves as they disappeared into the darkness under the trees, Lucy set her feet on the path and broke into a sprint.

 

“Ridiculous,” Gloin snarled, thrashing against the confines of his sack. “And where in Mahal’s name is the human?”  
“She must’ve run off,” Thorin grunted, struggling with the ropes binding his arms to his sides. “The first hint of danger . . . even the hobbit stayed around.”  
“Thank you?” Bilbo said uncertainly, craning his neck to look up at the dwarf. “I – I don’t think Lucy ran, though, she’s quite brave.”  
“Oh, what do you know of bravery?” Thorin sneered.  
“Lucy probably has a plan,” Kili said, twisting around to look at his uncle. “She’s very clever.”  
“So’s the hobbit, if Gandalf’s to be believed,” Gloin muttered, prompting Bilbo to cry, “I’m right here!”  
But one of the trolls was speaking, his deep voice overriding the panicked chatter of the dwarves. “’Urry up,” he grunted. “Dawn’s coming, and I don’t fancy being turned into stone.” Bilbo stilled, grasping at the straw, and then he realized that if he were Lucy, if he were not bound by the fire, he would do one thing, and it wouldn’t be flee. He would get Gandalf. And surely that was what Lucy was doing, clever person that she was.  
“Wait!” he bellowed, heaving himself to his feet, and three sets of dim, blinking troll eyes focused on him.

 

The scene in the small clearing was fairly hellish, like a single corner of a Hieronymus Bosch painting. Gandalf put a hand on Lucy’s shoulder and squeezed to stay her as her hand flexed on the grip of her bow, knuckle-dusters creaking. “There is no sense charging in blind,” he reminded her. “I shall crack that great boulder to the East and let the sunlight do our work for us. You remain here. Do not expose yourself unless you must – there is no sense whatsoever in you getting yourself captured as well. Cover me if it comes to that, but mind that your arrows could not pierce their skin.”  
Lucy forced her hand to relax, drawing an arrow with the other. “I’ve got you,” she said, and the wizard released her to hurry into the trees, making his way around the circle. Lucy eased closer to the glow of the fire, careful to stay in the shadows, and felt a surge of admiration when she saw Bilbo standing upright, facing down the trolls from inside some kind of confining wrap, babbling in what had to be a desperate bid for time.  
“Y-yes, yes, I’m telling you, the secret is . . .” The hobbit cast around, his head rolling on his neck as he looked for inspiration. Lucy’s fingers flexed on the bowstring. “. . . to . . . skin them first!”  
Immediate and understandable outcry from the dwarves, Dwalin’s voice bellowing over the others as he pointed threateningly at Bilbo (or at least pointed as best he could, while strapped to a roasting spit). “I won’t forget that! I won’t!”  
Lucy ignored the panic of the dwarves and the conversation of the trolls, her eyes combing the dark greenery for any hint of Gandalf – there, a flicker of movement in the bushes. If he took much longer she was going to start shooting just to buy the dwarves time, because she wasn’t sure she could hit each troll in the eye, at this distance, in the dark. She was good, but they had tiny eyes for such massive creatures.  
“– nothing wrong with a bit of raw dwarf!” Lucy tensed, drawing her bow as the troll hoisted Bombur into the air. She sighted down the shaft, aiming for the left eye and hoping Bombur wouldn’t land directly on his head. “Nice and crunchy!”  
“N-no, not that one!” Bilbo cried, and Lucy held. “H-he’s infected!”  
“’E wot?”  
“Yeah, h-he’s got – worms. In his – tubes.”  
The troll cried out and dropped Bombur, who, from his shout of pain, didn’t incur a fatal spinal injury from the fall.  
“In fact, they’re all infested with parasites, it’s a terrible business. I wouldn’t risk it, I really wouldn’t.” Bilbo wrinkled his nose, looking from one troll to another. Lucy shook her head, impressed with his improvisation.  
“Paras–? We don’t have parasites!” Kili cried, and Lucy could have kicked him. As it was, she looked for Gandalf again. Hurry, old man, hurry! “You have parasites, you –”  
All of the dwarves were clamoring now, but Lucy saw Thorin jerk where he lay, kicking Kili into silence, and suddenly they were all proclaiming that yes, they had parasites, awful parasites, parasites as big as an arm. “I’ve got the biggest parasites you’ve ever seen, huge!” Kili yelled at the top of his lungs.  
“I’m riddled!” Ori shouted, his thin voice sounding from over the fire, and Lucy winced to see him there, slowly turning on the spit. She sighted on the troll doing the turning this time. Gandalf was taking so long . . .  
“What would you have us do, then? Let ‘em all go?” One of the trolls jabbed a finger at Bilbo, almost knocking him down.  
“Well –”  
“This little ferret’s taking us for fools!”  
“Ferret!” Bilbo cried, outraged even now, and Lucy finally, finally saw Gandalf opposite the clearing, standing silhouetted against the dawn.  
“The dawn will take you all!” he bellowed.  
“’Ho’s that?” asked one of the trolls.  
“No idea,” replied another.  
“Can we eat him, too?”  
Gandalf’s staff struck the rock, and it split cleanly down the middle, massive though it was, dawn’s light flooding through to wash over the trolls, the grimy campsite, the sacked Company. The trolls cried out, shuddering away from the light even as their gray skin hardened, crackling, flaking off, until they finally went still. There was a moment of stunned silence as they all stared at the troll-stones, and then the dwarves burst into relieved laughter. Lucy moved forward quickly, propping her bow against a tree as she ran for the fire, scattering it with a few careful stomps and then kicking dirt over the embers.  
“Aye, there’s a good lass,” Dwalin shouted. “Oi! Ye get yer foot outa me back, now!”  
“I can’t,” Nori said, wriggling.  
“Hold still, hold still,” Lucy scolded, drawing one of her knives. “If you don’t let me do this right, it’ll be a decent drop to the ground.”  
It was hard to hold still, though, with Lucy clambering up the poles supporting the spit, and then carefully over the bound dwarves, trying to cut ropes strategically, but quickly enough that they didn’t grow understandably impatient. They dropped one by one, Gandalf making much quicker work of the dwarves who had been left on the ground.  
“I see that you came back,” Thorin said, surveying Lucy darkly as he rubbed the already-fading red mark where the neck of the sack had bitten into his skin. “Decided to return with the danger gone?”  
Lucy bristled, glaring at him. “I went to get Gandalf,” she retorted. “Or did you think it dumb luck that he returned in time to save your skins?”  
“Easy, lass,” Dwalin mumbled behind her, and Lucy took the advice, walking away, just because Thorin was a king. She wanted a look at the troll-stones, anyway, before they moved on.  
They were eerie things, the features still fixed in ugly, lifelike scowls. Lucy found herself clambering up one before she thought the impulse through, standing on the shoulders. Kili caught sight of her and laughed. “How’s the view?” he called.  
Lucy looked around at the filthy camp, the greasy bones, the abandoned burlap sacks, the scattered firepit. “Not too good,” she said, looking beyond, and a dark shape against the near hillside caught her eye. She squinted at it, the shape of a cave making itself clear to her.  
She looked down at her perch. Trolls couldn’t move in daylight . . .  
“Gandalf?” she called down, and he looked up obligingly from his discussion with Thorin. “Do trolls favor caves?”

 

The cave smelled like death, plain and simple. It hit Lucy like a brick wall, her eyes watering, and she had to reach a hand out for the stone to steady herself against it as her head swam. One of the dwarves gave her a hearty clap on the back as he passed, chuckling at her discomfit. “Steady as she goes,” Dwalin said as he followed, offering a second smack on the back.  
Kili stopped beside her, gripping her shoulder instead of pounding it. “Alright?” he asked, frowning.  
Lucy nodded, forcing herself to take deep breaths to desensitize herself to the smell as quickly as possible. She could have waited outside, of course, but with some of the dwarves still unconvinced that she had run for Gandalf and not just run away, she couldn’t afford to cut herself that break.  
Even though, of course, it wasn’t the foul smell itself that had her leaning against the rock for support, the other hand on her knee. It was the memories that rose up with the smell – the hollow, chill darkness echoing with cruel, cackling laughter and snarled, cold words . . . She screwed her eyes shut, but that immediately made it worse, so she opened them again and stared at an unlikely flower where it grew in a crack in the rock. Flower meant sunshine. Fresh air.  
“Are you sick?” Kili fretted, cautiously gripping her shoulder. “You’re pale as a cheese.”  
Lucy looked up at him – a juxtaposition of the usual, since he stood above her on the slope. He looked so worried that it surprised her – his thick brows knitted together, his broad mouth turned down at the corners, his dark eyes bright and concerned. “I’m fine,” she said, straightening. “Thanks.”  
Kili stuck close to her, though, as they descended into the low cave, unwilling to leave someone who was obviously upset, even if Lucy did regain her usual air of calm once they were inside.  
“Be careful what you touch!” Gandalf called back to the dwarves from deeper in the cave.  
“I’d suggest you touch nothing,” Lucy said, gently toeing a femur that she recognized as human. It was easier than she expected to act like her normal self, though not entirely easy, and the panicky beat of her heart was even beginning to slow. “God knows what diseases have been festering down here.”  
Nori, Bofur, and Gloin ignored the advice, heaping a small chest with gold and digging a hole to stash it in, watched by an unsmiling Dwalin. Fili and Ori had found the moldering sketchbook of some unfortunate traveler to pore over, and Gandalf and Thorin were making an inspection of several swords they’d found in the deeper recesses of the space.  
“Oh, what’s the worst that could happen?” Kili said, watching Lucy frown as she surveyed the room. He planted his hands deep in his pockets to keep from touching anything, though.  
Lucy arched a single brow at him, which he found impressive because he’d never been able to accomplish the feat, but relented. Her eye had caught on something interesting enough to outweigh her caution, and Lucy approached the object carefully, trailing Kili.  
“What’s that, then?” he asked as she unbuckled her gauntlets and stuck them in her belt.  
“I think . . .” Lucy murmured, brushing spider webs from the design stamped into the leather, the shape that had drawn her attention. She undid the buckle and flipped the large envelope open, unfolding to reveal three panels, studded with small metallic shapes. “. . . it’s stars,” she finished, and grinned at him, clearly pleased by the discovery.  
“Stars?” Kili repeated, frowning at the flat, nondescript objects, and reached for one before Lucy could warn him or yank the envelope out of his reach.  
There was blood before there was pain, and Lucy dropped the envelope, grabbing Kili’s hand as he blinked at his red fingertips in surprise. “Damn it, Kili!” she said, trying to get a look at the damage through all the blood. The curse, voiced in her own language, sounded foreign to his ears. “You sheared your fingertips clean off!”  
“It doesn’t hurt,” Kili protested as Lucy produced a handkerchief to sponge away the blood, but at the firm touch, it did, the first light sting traveling up his arm. He hissed.  
“Feel it now?” Lucy challenged, glancing up at him from under those thin brows. “They’re so sharp you can’t feel the cut, at first. They do very clean work.”  
“Except for all of the blood, of course,” Kili quipped, watching Lucy press the kerchief against his fingertips and then turn them against his palm, squeezing her hands around his fist to tighten it. A little shock ran up his arm, which he attributed to the injury.  
“Hold that tight,” she said, stooping to retrieve the envelope. “If you’re a very lucky dwarf, they’ll have stopped bleeding by the time we get outside, and I won’t have to cauterize them.”  
“But that’s my sword-hand,” Kili protested.  
“That’s why you’ll be lucky if the bleeding stops on its own,” Lucy said pragmatically, flicking a small pale bloody something off of the envelope, and Kili realized that it was one of his fingertips, grimacing. He wasn’t at all squeamish, and he accidentally injured himself on a regular basis –last time, it had been burning his forearm in Dwalin’s forge, since he had no craft for forging (which was to Thorin’s disappointment, of course, but so much was) – but the sight was fairly ghastly.  
“What’ve you got there, Miss Lucy?” Balin asked as she and Kili hiked up out of the cave. He could feel his pulse throbbing in his whole hand, now, he was clenching it so tight, determined to make the blood still.  
“Maps,” Luc said, lying so fluidly that Kili gave her a startled look. She winked at him, the same silent bid to keep quiet he’d given her when he and Fili teased Bilbo about the orcs, so he held his tongue. “Let’s go sit under that tree,” she suggested to him as Balin went to join his brother. “I’ll get these put away, and tend to that hand.”  
“What under Earth have you done to yourself this time?” Thorin demanded, waylaying them before they made it three steps into the sunshine. He eyed the bloody scrap of cloth in Kili’s fist suspiciously. Fili peered around their uncle’s shoulder, curious.  
“It was a foolish accident,” Kili said, truthfully. “Lucy will bind it up for me.”  
Thorin turned his gaze on Lucy, even more suspicious. “Go to Oin,” he said after a moment.  
“I’m busy with Bifur!” Oin called from a nearby rock, where he had the younger dwarf perched as he inspected the palm of his hand. “He was stuck with something sharp.”  
Rolling his eyes, Thorin made a slight gesture to send the human and his younger nephew on their way. The wound was obviously small, and even a human would be hard put to muck up the application of a bandage.  
“So why don’t you want anyone to know about the stars?” Kili asked, as soon as they were in the shade of the pine Lucy chose, far enough away from the others for conversation to go unheard, but not so far away as to look suspicious.  
“Only a fool reveals all of her secrets,” Lucy replied, shrugging out of her pack to fit the leather envelope inside.  
“And what are those even for?” Kili started to unwind the kerchief. “What would you need sharp stars for?”  
“Throwing,” Lucy replied. She glanced towards the others, and then popped a panel on her jerkin that looked to have been flat, just another piece of leather sewn into the garment. It was lined with glinting metal in deadly little shapes, and Lucy quickly smoothed it back into place against her ribs. Kili stared.  
“What else’ve you got in there?” he demanded, and she laughed.  
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Lucy unbuckled her medical kit from her pack. “Hand, please.”  
Kili offered it, relieved to see that the bleeding had, indeed, stopped, though it sluggishly began again when the cloth was drawn away. Lucy shook her head, pulling small tins of salve and poultice out of the pack, popping the lid off each to sniff. “Why don’t you just label them?” Kili asked, shifting to sit cross-legged. “Ori’s got paints and ink.”  
“If I’m captured and the captor wants the use of my things, he has to keep me alive if he wants to know what’s good for.” Lucy glanced at him over the rim of a tin as she inhaled. “Quite a few of these are toxic, to that end.”  
Kili knew he was staring, but it was difficult to reconcile this information with the memory of a bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked Lucy laughing until she bent double at “Blunt the Knives” in Bag End. He’d known she was a fighter, of course, but fighter didn’t necessarily mean deadly stars and poisoned balms.  
The really unsettling thing was that she’d said only fools revealed all their secrets, and she clearly wasn’t one, so the stars and the medical kit were likely only two of many, many more secrets.  
The musings fled his mind when Lucy struck the right salve and leaned forward with it, Kili leaning back despite himself. “Are you sure that’s a good one?” he only half-joked, grinning nervously.  
Lucy laughed and licked her finger to prove her confidence, smoothing the salve over his bloody fingertips before he had time to really process that sight. This time it was harder to discount the sparks of sensation on his skin as byproducts of the injury; the little jolts of warmth felt uncomfortably like – he didn’t care to think what, focusing instead on the pain, which was slight. The stars were that sharp.  
There were tiny patches of gauze in place in a second, bound down with thin linen strips. Kili flexed his fingers, amazed that the bandages were light enough not to interfere with shooting his bow. Or he thought so, he’d have to practice.  
Kili watched her pack up the kit again, methodical but quick, deadly salves stacked confidently in with the healing ones. “Everything Gandalf said about you was true, wasn’t it?” he asked.  
Lucy glanced up at him, frowning slightly in confusion. “Of course,” she answered. “Why else would he have said it?”  
Lucy shrugged back into her pack as Fili found them, fussing over Kili’s fingers and giving him a smack upside the head for injuring himself again. From what she was overhearing, it was a fairly regular occurrence, and she had to fight to keep a smile off her face – one that quickly fell away on its own when someone cried that something was coming their way through the woods.  
If she’d been on her own, Lucy would have run away from the sound, but everyone else was running towards it before she could suggest otherwise, so she had little choice but to follow. Whoever it was coming made an awful lot of noise, and was shouting unintelligible, disjointed words like a madman. Lucy exchanged a confused look with Kili as she came to a stop beside him, both of them laying arrows to their bows.  
The new arrival crashed into the clearing – some kind of sleigh, coming to an abrupt halt, drawn not by horses but – rabbits?  
“Radagast,” Gandalf said warmly, and Lucy recognized the driver of the sleigh in the same moment. She relaxed, straightening from a fighting stance, most of the dwarves following her and Gandalf’s suit. “The Brown! What on Earth are you doing here?”  
“I was looking for you, Gandalf. Something’s wrong. Something’s terribly wrong.” The other wizard was obviously distressed, his mismatched eyes flitting nervously over the company, his fingers fidgeting on his staff.  
“Yes?” Gandalf prompted slowly.  
“Oh – oh! Just give me a minute – oh! I had a thought, and now I lost it, it was right there, on the tip of my tongue . . . Oh! That’s not a thought at all!” Lucy raised her eyebrows as Radagast’s voice grew thicker. “’S a silly lil stick inthect!”  
Gandalf pulled the bug free with a frown. Lucy caught sight of Bilbo’s confused and consternated look, and laughed. Radagast looked towards the sound, his round, kind face breaking into a smile. “Oh!” he repeated, clambering down from his sleigh. “Oh! Lucy, m’dear!”  
“Radagast,” Lucy said, accepting his hug with a wince. He always smelled like rotting and growing greenery, animal musk, unwashed person . . .  
“Oh, you’ve gone and hurt yourself again,” he fretted, patting a scar on her hand that hadn’t been there the last time they met. “Always running off and hurting yourself, Lucy, why must you do such things? Oh, oh . . .”  
“Radagast,” Lucy said gently, smiling at him, “didn’t you want to speak to Gandalf about something?”  
“Oh! Yes, yes, something is terribly wrong! Gandalf –”  
“Here,” Gandalf said, putting an arm around the shorter wizard’s shoulders. “Come this way, old fellow, we’ll get it sorted out.” He drew Radagast back towards the troll cave, where there would be fewer distractions.  
“You seem to know an awful lot of wizards,” Bilbo observed as the pair moved away.  
“I’ve met three of the five,” Lucy agreed. “That’s a majority, so I suppose that’s a lot.”  
“You’ve met three wizards?” Ori cried, eavesdropping shamelessly. “How?”  
Lucy shrugged. “The usual way. Hello, my name is, how do you do.” She was deliberately flip, making Ori laugh, hoping he wouldn’t ask if she’d had any particular business with the Istari. Even they couldn’t help me.  
Bilbo gave a comical shudder. “Three wizards sounds a bit much for me,” he said. “Always stirring things up . . .”  
“Oh, hush, fusspot, you know you’re glad to be here,” Lucy said fondly, and Bilbo stammered and stuttered until he finally said that he needed to tend to his sword, which of course only brought the raunchy puns out of Fili and Kili, which sent Bilbo scurrying away blushing red to his ears.  
“Think we were a bit mean?” Fili asked, grinning as he lounged back against a tree trunk.  
“Maybe a bit, but he makes it so easy,” Kili replied, still chuckling. Ori was as red as Bilbo, but Lucy was trying not to laugh – she did love puns, especially truly horrible ones. They all chatted and lazed for a few minutes, enjoying the respite from travel. Many of the older dwarves were beginning to feel their lack of sleep, but the “youngsters” – as the quartet of Fili, Kili, Ori, and Lucy was now referred to – were still young enough not to miss the sleep. Lucy leaned back against one of the massive trees, turning her face up to the sun, and Kili absent-mindedly counted the decorations on and in her ear.  
One very small ring in the lobe, followed up the curve of her ear by two studs, a cartilage piercing near the crest of the ear, and a really tiny ring in the small curl of cartilage that circled back towards her face – a forward-something, he could never remember the name, not being fond of piercing his own parts. He could only see her in profile, but if his memory served, the other ear sported a ring, three studs, and a small cuff. The metals were all mismatched: gleaming gold, silver, steel, and copper. One ring even looked to be made of the crude black iron favored by orcs and goblins – though of course, he told himself, that can’t be right. There was also a small stud in her nostril, which he had noticed before and wondered at, because he’d never seen a Human with a pierced nose before, just the occasional Dwarf from far to the West.  
Dori liked to say that you could learn everything you needed to know about a person from their jewelry of lack thereof. Kili wondered what he made of Lucy’s odd collection. Her necklace was a small device in burnished gold, on a sturdy and incongruous leather cord. She only wore one ring, on her right thumb: a plain, flat steel thing with no real value of any kind, beyond possibly sentimental.  
A weird hodgepodge of metals in wildly differing styles. All good quality but not flashy, not very expensive. Practical, sturdy, understated. Kili’s eyes wandered back to the hollow between Lucy’s collarbones, lazily trying to make out the device of her necklace, but he was too far away, and the work too fine, for him to make out any detail. The skin beneath the pendant, however, was easily viewed – a little pink from sun, but soft-looking, with a white scar over one collarbone. He wondered idly what had caused it, in kind of an odd spot to come from combat . . . perhaps a freak accident of some sort; that could also possibly account for the scar near her temple . . . There was a faint pink scar that looked like it entirely encircled her neck; he’d never noticed that before, either.  
Lucy jerked out of her sunny doze at the rough animal cry that echoed over the lowland. Kili startled more at her jerk to wakefulness, eyes round and frightened, than he did at the sound itself, though he was reaching for an arrow before he even thought to do so.  
“Was that a wolf?” Bilbo said quickly, head up. “Are there – are there wolves out there?”  
“Wolves? No, that is not a wolf,” Bofur said, drawing his weapon close like everyone else.  
“Warg,” Lucy said flatly, wishing, with everyone else, that it was just wolves, harmless, shy wolves, and not great slavering beats trained to rend dwarves and human limb from –  
The first warg came from behind Bilbo and Bofur, Lucy sending an arrow its way, but it was a bad, panicked shot, hitting the thing in the snout instead of the eye, and the animal slid into Thorin’s axe still snarling. “Kili!” she shouted, sending a second arrow after the warg behind Thorin, Kili’s landing a split instant after hers, the thing falling at their feet mid-lunge, dead.  
“Warg scouts,” Thorin grunted, heaving his axe free of the first animal’s corpse. “Which means an orc pack is not far behind.”  
Lucy’s hands shifted and flexed on the stave of her bow, her heart pounding already, sending the sensation of a tiny heartbeat into her scars. Grimly, she unbuckled her light helm from her pack, drawing it down snug around her skull.  
“Orc pack?” Bilbo repeated, over-enunciating in his disbelief.  
“Who did you tell of your quest, beyond your kin?” Gandalf demanded, striding towards Thorin.  
“No one.”  
“Who did you tell?”  
“No one, I swear!” Thorin took in Gandalf’s frown. “What in Durin’s name is going on?”  
“You are being hunted,” Gandalf said grimly, and Lucy’s heart stuttered. No one had said anything about being hunted by orcs on this quest, she’d known they’d be around, but hunted by them – it was enough to make her vision momentarily gray the edges.  
“We have to get out of here,” Dwalin said grimly, looking around.  
“We can’t!” Ori cried, running towards the others. “We have no ponies! They bolted!”  
Lucy had less than an instant for one fleeting thought – Huckleberry – and then there was another warg cry. She wheeled to face the sound, her hands each gripping bow and sword, stupid, she couldn’t use both, but –  
“I’ll draw them off,” Radagast said, his eyes narrowed.  
“These are Gundabad wargs,” Gandalf objected. “They will outrun you.”  
“These are Rhosgobel rabbits,” Radagast rejoined, drawing himself up. The effect was not impressive. “I’d like to see them try.”  
He climbed awkwardly aboard his little sleigh again, nodding to Lucy, who was too gripped in fear to return the gesture, and then he was gone, the rabbit team bounding forward, quickly out of sight, raising a horrible howling from the nearing wargs that made Lucy’s skin crawl, and so many of them.  
They ran at Gandalf’s command, breaking through the trees and onto the lowlands, halting behind a rocky outcropping as he peered out, calling for another sprint, another halt. Lucy could feel her shirt clinging to her body with sweat, had never been more glad that she favored light armor and small weapons, because it meant that she was still swift, although she was still held back by the slower dwarves, carrying too much weight for even their fear to lighten the load.  
“Stay together,” Gandalf hissed more than once, and more than once he or Thorin miscalculated the location of the orc pack on the rough terrain, Radagast’s mad, winding path difficult to predict, and when that happened the people in front stopped so quickly that the others piled up behind them like a logjam, and all the while her heart pounded no no no no no no. Dashing around a boulder, grabbing Ori to pull him back out of sight, catching lagging Bombur by the shoulder to drag him onward, stumbling and being pulled from the ground before she truly fell by a hand whose owner she did not see. It felt like she was a rabbit before a lurcher, although their group wasn’t really being hunted, at least not yet, and when Gandalf bid them to stop against a low outcropping, press against it to hide, Lucy put her head back against the cold stone gratefully, glad to give her racing heart a break before it burst. There was no respite, though – the second her eyes closed, she heard it: the scuffling of huge feet, the snuffling of its snout. There was a warg on top of them, on the bluff just behind their heads.  
Thorin glanced back towards the warg and its rider, then to Kili, nodding in the direction of his nephew’s bow – far from a respectable weapon for a dwarf, but often a useful one. Kili nodded, reaching with his free hand to grip Lucy’s forearm.  
Her eyes flew open at the touch; she was white-faced, her eyes made larger and darker in comparison, oddly bright as they fixed on his. Kili flicked his gaze back over their heads, tapping his bow lightly against hers, which she gripped so tightly that her knuckles were white under the gauntlets. “Orc,” he mouthed, pointing to her, and to himself, “Warg.” Lucy nodded, and they stepped out from the cover of the bluff without any more discussion, two quick running steps, wheeling, firing. The warg snarled, clawing blind at the arrow in its neck as it fell forward, tumbling, its rider struggling to tug the arrow from his chest, just to the left of his heart. He was snarling as he lunged to his feet, the warg squealing and screaming as two more arrows struck its throat, Dwalin moving forward to intercept the orc before he reached either young archer, followed by Gloin and Nori. Lucy and Kili fell back to either side of the Company, arrows on the string.  
The warriors made short work of the orc and the warg, perhaps twenty seconds passing, but it was too loud. Lucy winced to hear a mustering cry from the orc pack, the remaining wargs beginning to howl. Mother Mary, she prayed, and that was all she could string together.  
“Move!” Gandalf shouted unnecessarily. Lucy was already shifting anxiously from foot to foot. “Run!”  
They did, faster than before even though everyone was tiring, only to find the way ahead speckled with wargs. They veered south, to be confronted with the same sight. “There’s more coming!” Kili yelled from the west, the scattered Company all wheeling in desperation, looking for a way not blocked by the enemy.  
“We’re surrounded!” Fili called from the east, and Lucy cast around in all directions to be sure, but they were right, the orcs were on all sides and closing in. She could hear their shouts now, harsh orders in the biting snarl of the Black Tongue, each word sending a splinter of fear up her spine. She fell in with the others, grouping close, backs to the center of their loose circle, glancing to either side to see Dwalin on her left and Ori on her right.  
“Shoot them!” Thorin roared, and she and Kili both raised their bows, but there weren’t enough arrows between the two of them, and too many targets for them to have time to shoot them all even if they had the arrows, before the orc pack would be upon them.  
“Where’s Gandalf?” someone cried, Lucy couldn’t glance to see who, too busy making every arrow count, hitting eyes and throats with the kind of accuracy that only came when the whole world had telescoped down to a single, concise goal.  
“He’s abandoned us!”  
Ori raised his sling, a sad excuse for a weapon that better served as a child’s toy, but his aim was good, his stone hitting the advancing warg square on the snout. It snorted, shook off the paltry blow. Lucy got it with an arrow in the eye, advancing quickly to draw Ori further back by a fistful of cardigan, shoving him into the middle of the ring. “Hold your ground!” Thorin shouted, drawing his sword.  
And Gandalf popped out of the rocks like a jack-in-the box, Lucy blinking in momentary confusion as he cried, “This way, you fools!”  
“C’mon, move! Quickly, all of you!” Thorin stood above the crevice in the ground, handing down the dwarves as they dropped feet-first into the dark – Bofur, Oin, Gloin, Bilbo, Balin – Lucy shoved Ori into Thorin’s arms and turned, her arrow ready on the string, standing to provide protective cover for those dropping down the hole, one by one, but not a great distance because she could hear them land, muffled thumps and grunts of complaint – Dwalin, Fili, Bombur –  
“Kili!” Thorin roared, grabbing Lucy and shoving her towards the crack in the ground, and, wobbling on the lip of the rock, Lucy spotted him, too far out, way too far out, twenty yards away, drawing and firing arrow after arrow. “Come!”  
The prince obeyed, finally turning and racing for the crevasse, but he wasn’t fast enough, not weighed down by his gear, throwing glances over his shoulder as he sprinted, which was always a terrible idea. Lucy staggered, overthrowing her weight to keep from falling into safety and landing on her knees, so she could send one arrow, two, into the orc closest Kili, who fell from his warg with a shriek, the confused mount wheeling at the loss, distracted.  
Thorin grabbed her again, gave too hard a push to counter this time, and Lucy tumbled head over heels down a steep stone face and into the dim space below, which was choked with raised dust and the swearing of dwarves.  
A horn sounded above them, on the surface of the Earth, a low, clear sound almost like the toll of a bell, and Lucy let out a breath of relief. She knew that sound. Elf patrol.  
More sounds of a struggle filtered down to them, the thuds of arrows and blades into flesh, the cries of wounded wargs and orcs. The Company stood at the ready, wary of an enemy finding their way down to them. One of the orcs fell into the crevasse, rolling down to land at their feet, and Lucy had a knife in hand so quickly it was only a flash of silver, throwing her weight down behind the blade as she dropped with a grunt.  
The nearest dwarves stared, watched her rip the knife free from the orc’s eye socket and straighten from her sudden crouch. “I think he was already dead,” Ori said faintly, looking pale at the sight of black blood welling from the ruined eye.  
“Now we know he is,” Lucy snapped. Thorin shouldered her aside to tug the arrow from the orc’s throat, scowling at the shape that revealed itself to him.  
“Elves,” he said in disgust, throwing it down.  
“I cannot see where the pathway leads!” Dwalin called from deeper in the rock. “Do we follow it or no?”  
“Follow it, of course,” Bofur said, already hurrying forward, and the others fell in behind him, eager to put distance between themselves and any lingering orcs.  
“I think that would be wise,” Gandalf murmured, half to himself, counting members of the Company as they moved past.  
The tall, narrow passageway quickly became cramped, the broader dwarves turning sideways to scoot between the rough walls. Lucy was unsurprised to find a hand gripping her shoulder, she thought for support, but was surprised when she glanced back and saw it was Thorin, his blue eyes burning into hers. “Thank you,” he said gruffly, and it took her a scattered moment to remember fighting her descent to the passageway, instead remaining above ground, covering Kili. “He might not have made it, otherwise.”  
Lucy didn’t know how to reply. She’s saved lives before, occasionally, and was usually thanked for it, but it usually wasn’t someone she borderline disliked thanking her, who borderline disliked her, who had accused her of cowardice, who was a king. Her heart was still thudding like a war drum, her pulse in the scars on her neck, her forehead, her hand, her arm, her back, making her slow. So she simply nodded, hoping that was enough, that it wasn’t rude, and Thorin let his hand draw away again.  
The way finally opened up, with a small waterfall that created a natural, shallow staircase, the Company fanning out as it reached the more open space. Lucy was looking down, preoccupied with the pretense of adjusting her vambraces so no one will notice her hands shaking, so Bofur has to give her a light punch in the arm to get her to look up.  
She would have fallen to her knees in relief if she hadn’t been surrounded by dwarves. The Valley of Imladris was spread out before them, as Gandalf stated aloud, adding that in Westron it was known by another name.  
“Rivendell,” Bilbo said wonderingly, doubtless having read of the place, and though she had been there before, Lucy shared his awe.  
The hike down was not brief, but it was beautiful. Lucy had always thought that Rivendell looked otherworldly, even for this world. The oldest dwarves were uncomfortable, sharing Thorin’s dislike of elves either from their own experiences or out of solidarity with their leader. Ori looked nearly as stuck as Bilbo, however, and Lucy knew he was itching to sketch everything, all at once, before he forgot it or they moved on.  
“Bit flimsy-looking, isn’t it?” Kili remarked as they finally walked onto the pavilion where visitors traditionally waited to be granted entry.  
“It’s stood for several thousand years so far,” Lucy pointed out, rolling her eyes at him.  
“I said flimsy-looking, not flimsy.” Kili frowned at some of the thinner towers. “I’d not feel safe at the top of that thing.”  
“You wouldn’t be safe,” Fili said dryly. “You’d trip on your own feet and pitch clear over the side.”  
They fell quiet as an elf approached, descending gracefully down the statue-flanked stairs before the Company. “Mithrandir,” he greeted Gandalf, smiling, and Gandalf returned his gesture of welcome, greeting him by name. The elf continued, in Sindarin, “We heard you had entered the valley.”  
“I must speak with Lord Elrond,” Gandalf said in Westron, his smile quickly fading.  
“Milord Elrond is not here,” the young elf replied in the same, with a mild frown.  
“Not here,” Gandalf repeated. “Where is he?”  
The elf opened his mouth to reply, but before he could, the patrol horn sounded behind them. The Company turned at the sound, Lucy brightening at the idea of seeing Elrond, but the dwarves had an entirely different reaction. “Close ranks!” Thorin shouted as they packed together, Bilbo and Ori quickly passed to the center.  
“What?” Lucy said, looking back. “No, I won’t –” and Dwalin grabbed her by the shoulder and roughly passed her back, safe in the middle with the baby and the hobbit. She scowled. The patrol rode in, circling them curiously, the dwarves snarling or shouting at their soon-to-be hosts.  
Their leader smiled down at the wizard. “Gandalf!” he greeted.  
“Lord Elrond,” Gandalf returned, and switched fluidly to Sindarin. “My friend! Where have you been?”  
“We’ve been hunting a pack of Orcs that came up from the South,” Elrond replied, dismounting smoothly. “We slew a number near the Hidden Pass.” Lucy had to guess that the Hidden Pass was the crack in the rock their Company had just traveled through. The lord switched to Westron. “Strange, for them to come so close to our borders. Something, or someone, has drawn them near.”  
“Ah, that may have been us,” Gandalf admitted, looking back at the Company. The dwarves were beginning to look sheepish, with the exception of Thorin, who stepped forward with his head high.  
“Welcome Thorin, son of Thrain,” Elrond acknowledged, nodding.  
“I do not believe we have met,” Thorin said, a little gracelessly.  
“You have your grandfather’s bearing,” Elrond explained. “I knew Thror, when he ruled under the mountain.”  
“Indeed?” Thorin replied. “He made no mention of you.”  
Lucy winced.  
Elrond studied the dwarf king with slightly narrowed eyes. “You have walked far, and seen battle,” he said in Evlish. “We would offer you our hospitality – food, drink, and rest.”  
“What is he sayin’?” Gloin roared. “Does he offer us insult?!” The dwarves bristled, clamoring.  
“No, Master Gloin, he offered you food,” Gandalf said, and the mood immediately changed, enough so that Lucy was finally able to elbow her way forward.  
“Lord Elrond,” she said, offering a deep nod. She never could get used to bowing.  
Another smile broke over his face. Elrond had all the legendary grace and comportment of his people, with none of the stuffiness. It was one of the reasons that Lucy liked him so much. “Miss Bell,” he greeted, and asked in Sindarin, “How even you might have found yourself in such odd company, I cannot imagine.”  
She laughed, replying, “To speak the truth, I must say that at this point in my life, I no longer find odd even such circumstances as these.” Her accent was rusty, grating even to her own ears, but Elrond chuckled as he led the way inside.

 

It was almost a physical relief to stand under an elvish roof after the close brush with the orcs. Her hands were still shaking as she dropped her packs in the room the Company was shown to. The young elf assigned to shepherd them about noticed, asking with concern if she required a healer.  
“What’s he prattlin’ on about?” Dwalin asked her.  
“He wants to know if any of us are injured,” Lucy translated, a slight bend of the truth. “Are any of us?”  
“Naught but bumps and bruises all around,” Oin reported.  
Lucy replied that she and her friends were all quite fine, and thank you. The elf frowned at her, almost imperceptibly, but didn’t remark, instead asking if they would like to bathe before dinner.  
The baths were as beautiful as Lucy remembered, all smooth stone and gently flowing water. She was almost alone in the women’s baths, as the dwarves and Bilbo were all in the men’s, and what few elves were there left her to herself out of their usual politeness. It was a relief – she didn’t feel like fending off well-meaning inquiries about the state of her back, and what curious, concerned gazes did alight on her moved away too swiftly for her to notice.  
The warm water was soothing, easing the tremor from her muscles, coaxing her heart into slowing. It was a relief – not so much from fear, which Lucy was relatively used to, but a relief from seeming weak. She could only imagine what Thorin would have had to say about her upset if he’d noticed it, not after the troll incident. He still didn’t seem to believe that she’d only left them to bring Gandalf back.  
Happily clean and calm, Lucy dressed in fresh clothes – a bottle-green shirt this time, leaving her jerkin behind with her bag to go to dinner, since arms and armor were hardly needed at Elrond’s table.  
Dinner was served on an outdoor terrace washed in the warmth of the setting sun. Lucy found herself shuffled towards the smaller table with Elrond, Gandalf, and Thorin, as befitted someone who’d made the elf lord’s acquaintance before, though she didn’t know that; all she knew was that she was sitting at the grown-up’s table when she felt more like a kid. The wizard was late to the table, though, Elrond excusing himself to go find Gandalf and Thorin both, which left Lucy free to laugh as she watched Dori try to convince Ori to try a salad, the next table over. “I don’t like green food,” he said plaintively.  
Once everyone was present – Fili and Kili arriving damp-haired, moments after Gandalf and their uncle, smoothing their clothes and facial expressions as they hurried to the table – Elrond expressed a polite interest in Thorin’s new sword. The dwarf king scowled, almost refusing, but at a sharp look from Gandalf he acquiesced.  
“This is Orcrist,” he noted, drawing it partway. “The goblin-cleaver. A famous blade, forged by the High Elves of the West. My king, it will serve you well.” He sheathed it again and passed it back to Thorin, who studied the weapon with a hint of respect, if Lucy didn’t misjudge his expression.  
“. . . and this is Galmbring,” he continued, accepting the sword Gandalf handed to him. “The Foe-Hammer.”  
Lucy lost track of the story he told, distracted by Bilbo’s study of his own diminutive blade, and Balin’s gentle dismissal of it. She smiled, her attention quickly snapping back to her conversation partners when Gandalf said her name, hiding a startled jump. “Lucy? Would you care to lend Lord Elrond your sword?”  
“I left it in my room,” she said, offering an apologetic smile. “I did not imagine I would need it here.”  
“Another day, perhaps,” Elrond said, returning the smile. “But tell me, how did you come by these?” Gandalf explained about the troll cave and the orc attack, Elrond’s brows quickly rising. “What were you doing on the Great East Road?” he inquired. Lucy quickly looked down to avoid his gaze, fiddling with the fork at her place setting. She had the feeling that if she caught his gaze, she’d blurt something about the quest.  
Thorin and Gandalf exchanged looks, one heated, the other reproving. “Perhaps,” Elrond suggested, glancing at the elves present to provide dinner music, “we had best discuss the matter elsewhere.”  
He stood, quickly followed by Gandalf and Thorin. “Miss Bell?” the lord asked. “Will you join us?”  
Lucy caught a frown from Thorin and offered the elf a bright smile. “I don’t believe so, milord, although I thank you for your consideration. I’ve hardly touched my dinner.”  
“As you wish,” Elrond said, leading the way from the room. Bilbo had to scramble to keep up, summoned as he was by Gandalf calling his name – which got yet another unhappy look from the dwarf king. Balin excused himself to join them.  
“Finally,” Lucy said, abandoning her lonely table for its neighbor and taking her plate with her. She planted herself in Bilbo’s old spot, an elf smoothly stepping forward to remove the hobbit’s plate. “I can get along with any other lord just fine, but Thorin makes me nervous.”  
“Oh, aye, he’ll have that effect,” Dwalin agreed easily, pouring Lucy wine that she didn’t intend to drink. “Though he harbors no particular dislike for you.” So, not a particular dislike, just the disdain with which he seemed to favor all non-dwarves. “Tell me, Miss Lucy, since you seem to know all things elf – is there no meat, or just not here?”  
“The river elves don’t care for it, no,” Lucy said, and watched them all wilt. “The wood-elves do, if we happen to cross paths with them.”  
“Is there anyone you don’t know?” Ori asked from across the table, admiringly.  
Lucy gave her wineglass a tentative sniff. It smelled light, fruity. Not at all like the sour-bitter stink of beer or ale. “How do you mean?”  
“Gandalf, Elrond, Radagast,” Fili listed, jostling Ori as he reached across the younger dwarf for the wine pitcher.  
“The hobbit,” Kili added, smirking. “Just as odd, if not as impressive.”  
Lucy sipped her wine to keep from answering, surprised that she enjoyed it, and took advantage of that to prolong the sip, and her excuse for silence. When she’d drunk nearly half of it with the dwarves looking on expectantly, she was forced to abandon the ruse. “I’ve met all manner of people, in my wanderings,” she said, toying with the pretty glass. “It’s no surprise I’d encounter a few old acquaintances on this quest.”  
“Still a fair number of people to meet, for how young you are,” Gloin pointed out.  
There was no easy lie to explain it. She’d sought them out – the wise, the magical, the scholarly, the ancient, the observers. Lucy had listened for their names, read of them in books, received suggestions and references from those she already met. Gandalf, Radagast, Saruman, Elrond, Galadriel, Celeborn . . . She had asked for the council of each of them, and of others who she had now forgotten, and none had been able to aid her.  
“I move fast,” Lucy said brightly, and the conversation moved on because Ori chose that moment to finally try the lettuce, and sprayed green shreds all over the table. Laughter and cries of disgust both arose from the dwarves. The serene faces of their elf hosts became a bit strained as they tried to hide their own reactions to the display, which made Lucy helpless with laughter. The politeness of elves rivaled that even of hobbits.  
After they had all eaten their fill – or at least, when Lucy had eaten her fill and the dwarves had eaten as much greenery as they thought they could healthily stomach – they moved back to their room, surprised to find Thorin, Balin, Bilbo, and Gandalf still missing. Dwalin, Oin, Gloin, Dori, and Bifur were all clearly uncomfortable with the continued absence.  
“I believe they are in the library,” said the unruffled elf whose job, it seemed, was to stand in the hallway in case any of them needed something. “I do not feel it would be wise to disturb them.”  
“Oh, calm down, you old fuss-feathers, the king can handle himself,” Nori scolded his older brother, whose round face remained grave. “And Balin was no slouch when he was younger, right, Dwalin?”  
“Aye,” Dwalin admitted grudgingly. “Nothin’ for it but to wait, then.” He stretched, looking around the expansive room with a critical eye. “Who feels up to sparring? There’s the room for it, if we shove this lot out of the way.” He gave a low table an experimental shove with his foot, and it slid easily across the smooth stone floor.  
The idea was received eagerly. It was the work of minutes to shove the furnishings against the walls. The elf in the hallway intruded just briefly to investigate the source of the racket, laying eyes on the mayhem and immediately retreating again.  
The older dwarves, for the most part, were exhausted enough by the long day to sit back (Bifur, Bombur, Oin, Gloin, Dori), settling on the fringes of the cleared space to make quiet bets. Lucy began stretching to warm up as the others (Fili, Kili, Nori, Ori, Bofur, and Dwalin) found their weapons. She was relieved that the suggestion had been made, because even after the bath and dinner, her blood was still holding a fine hum in her veins. Hopefully, the exercise would eradicate it.  
“Who’ll be first, then?” Dwalin asked, swinging his axe to loosen his arms and back.  
Fili beat Lucy to taking the offer, and she was almost glad, wincing when axe met sword with a clang that sounded much louder to her indoors than it ever had outside. Or maybe it was that she hadn’t seen or heard Dwalin fight yet; the old warrior was like a rockslide brought to life. Fili was lucky to be light on his feet, dodging and sidestepping more than he landed blows. He clearly planned to outlast Dwalin, but the older dwarf ‘killed’ him first.  
“Good show, lad,” Dwalin told him, smacking the gasping prince on the back.  
“I thought I’d gotten better,” Fili said, not quite sullenly.  
“Ye have, of course, but I’ve been trainin’ ye since ye were a babe in arms.” Dwalin snorted. “Ye’ll best me when I’m dead.”  
Fili moved off the sparring floor to be consoled by Kili, who clapped his hands down on his brothers’ shoulders and squeezed so hard it looked painful. Lucy’s shoulders tightened just seeing it.  
“I’ll go,” Ori said brightly, but Dori interceded.  
“Oh, no, you don’t,” he said quickly. “You’ll come sit over here with me, is what you’ll do.”  
Lucy watched Ori cross the room to obey, shoulders slumped. Was the genteel dwarf really that stupid? The kid had the slingshot and a small belt knife to defend himself, and Dori didn’t want him to learn? She looked to Nori, whose street smarts surely made him disagree, and he only shrugged at her, shooting Dori an annoyed glance before he stepped up to challenge Dwalin.  
He fared better than Fili, moving much faster. It hardly looked as much like the pair were sparring as it did that they were dancing. “They’ve fought before,” Kili explained to Lucy, crossing his arms. He watched the fighters with admiration. “I don’t think even either of them knows how many times, what with Dwalin chasing Nori in and out of Ered Luin, roaring –”  
“‘Theif!’” Fili joined in on the final word, grinning. “Rough time, getting the two of them to agree to work together.”  
Lucy laughed. She could imagine it – Nori’s deadpan sarcasm and Dwalin’s short temper would not allow them to easily agree on anything, including terms of coexistence.  
They finally reached an impasse, and Nori slunk off the floor, fluid as a cat, to join his siblings. Dwalin was sweaty, but not yet winded, clearly waiting for a new opponent as he traded his battle-axes for a sword. Lucy stepped onto the clear section of floor, rolling her head to crack her neck. It gave several satisfying pops.  
Dwalin promptly looked horrified. “You?” he demanded.  
“Me,” Lucy agreed, looking around in confusion. To her surprise, several of the other dwarves looked just as surprised, though Nori, Bifur, and Bofur just looked thoughtful, and Fili and Kili were communicating between themselves with hard-to-read glances. “What?”  
“I’ll flatten ye,” Dwalin said, his tone part reproach and part protest. “Where’s your sword, even?”  
“By my bag,” Lucy answered, flexing her hands inside her gauntlets. “Don’t want it. And you won’t flatten me. We’re just sparring.”  
Dwalin was now looking around for support. “Go against someone smaller, first,” Dori suggested from the sideline. “One of the princes.”  
“One of them can go next,” Lucy said, even as both Kili and Fili stepped forward. “Unless you’re really that uncomfortable.”  
She could see the indecision play out on his face. Dwarves, as a rule, were not ones for sexism, and being of shorter stature than elves and men, weren’t keen on sizeism either. On the other hand, Lucy was about Dwalin’s height but easily a mere third of his mass, and while he had a sword, she chose to go without. He didn’t doubt her skill, but being a giant among his own race, Dwalin had spent his entire life having lessons about minding his strength drilled into his head, from parents, instructors, friends, family, lovers. He eyed Lucy’s frame – sturdy and muscular by human standards, but slight by dwarf standards – and finally shook his head.  
“Fili,” he ruled. He was bigger than Kili, but also far more cautious – less likely to injure by accident.  
Lucy frowned as Dwalin walked off the floor, replaced by the blond prince, who eyed her almost anxiously. She blinked back, unconcerned.  
“I don’t know how to attack someone without a weapon,” he said finally, after several moments of awkward stillness.  
“Swing the sword at her?” Kili suggested dryly, though he felt a little tense, himself, watching. All Lucy had were those gauntlets, and whatever secrets she had hidden about her person.  
Fili took the suggestion, falling into the first step of a sword routine at about half his usual speed. To his surprise, Lucy moved into the wide swing, turning as she did so the blade glanced off of something, no harm done.  
Kili grinned, finally understanding the reason behind the odd metal plates on the inside of Lucy’s knuckle-dusters. Where most just had leather, hers sported metal plates. He’d noticed them before, scarred with bright tracks where something sharp had scored the metal.  
Lucy ended her spin with the outside of her right hand against Fili’s throat. He blinked at her startled. “There’s a bone in your throat, just here,” she informed him. “If I’d struck you, it would have broken, and you died.”  
Oin was nodding confirmation for all of the confused onlookers, looking thoughtful as Lucy backed up to give Fili space.  
His next attack was of the same force and speed he’d used against Dwalin. Lucy didn’t engage with it, rolling under the blow to come up on her feet behind him, quickly reversing as Fili wheeled, already guessing where she had ended up and sending his sword in the appropriate direction. Lucy danced back, the tip of the sword within an inch of her belly, and came in behind it, with Fili unbalanced, to land a punch on the bunched muscles under the armpit of his sword arm. The weapon promptly clattered to the floor, Fili’s arm dropping limp at his side. He stared at his twitching fingers, trying to force his arm to lift.  
Lucy regarded him almost pityingly, though she didn’t mean to. Oin watched her closely, eyes round with interest. “Could you afford that surprise on the battlefield?” Lucy asked, and Fili retrieved the sword with his left hand. It was hard to tell, what with his hair in his face, but she thought he seemed to be blushing. (He was.)  
The sparring resumed. Fili was nearly as good with the weapon in his left hand as the right, and Lucy was harder-put to land blows as he gained confidence. The surprisingly quiet squeal of sword against metal plates sounded far more often.  
“How can she do that?” Ori asked no one in particular, his facing glowing pink with poorly contained excitement. “She shouldn’t be able to, Fili is much stronger.”  
“Perhaps not so much as you may think,” Dwalin said thoughtfully, his eyes tracking the pair’s movements closely. “And look how she spins, lad, as she moves into the sword’s edge – she couldn’t bear a direct blow from the weapon, not with just her hands, but a glancing blow is another matter.”  
It was clever, Kili thought, overhearing. Really clever. And that was no real surprise, considering the secret compartments (for surely there were more than just the one he’d seen) of her jerkin, the balms, the spiked strap usually braided into her hair. It was absent now, Lucy perhaps assuming Fili wouldn’t try to grab her hair. When he did manage to grab onto the hastily-wound braid, in a desperate bid to catch Lucy by virtually any part of her he could get his hands on, the prince pulled away with a yelp.  
“Sorry,” Lucy said, backing off with her hands raised. She’d pinched him a tad harder than she’d intended. “That wasn’t supposed to hurt.”  
Fili shook it off, switching the sword back to his right hand, the arm apparently recovered from the earlier numbing blow. He was more confident in himself, now, but also warier of Lucy, who was proving quite adept at landing small but wildly effective hits. Like the one to his arm, and the one that just now had left the tendons in his wrist sending jolts of odd, sparking pain up to his elbow, and that even through his sleeves and gloves. He hated to imagine the full effect, if his arm had been bare.  
Lucy finally ended the match with (the hilt of) her knife held to the notch where his skull met his spine. He ceded the floor to someone else, sweaty and unnerved. “Come here, lad,” Oin said, eyes sharp and curious. “I’ll make sure nothing will stick.”  
Fili went to him gratefully, the unpleasant tingles still racing up with arm. “He’ll be fine inside of the half hour,” Lucy said, her eyes moving with interest over the other dwarves. “If that long. Any other takers?”  
To no one’s surprise, it was the reformed thief who took her up on the question, leaving his own sword behind as he eyed her curiously. Lucy returned the gaze, the two circling each other. “Knives?” Lucy asked. Nori didn’t have one in hand, yet, but she wanted to know whether or not she could pull her own. The stars would stay hidden, of course; they had no place in a fight between friends.  
“Of course,” Nori replied, and she nodded.  
His speed took her by surprise, even after watching him against Dwalin, and Lucy had to push herself to keep up, to dodge in time, to land a hit. Nori, in turn, had to fend off unfamiliar tricks. He knew the common and even uncommon methods employed by other Dwarves in hand fighting, and even most of those used by Humans, but Lucy’s style was surprisingly unfamiliar.  
It was hardly five minutes before she got what felt like an elbow into his back, just below and to the side of his shoulder blade, and his arm went weak. Not as useless as Fili’s had been rendered earlier, but still oddly feeble, moving too slow. Lucy took advantage to attack that side, get a knife up under his beard – the hilt of it, thankfully.  
They broke apart almost before the onlookers could be sure of what had happened, though Dwalin was red-faced. Bifur chuckled at his distress, knowing how long it used to take Dwalin to trap the thief, back in the day, how much running and clambering and wrestling and shouting. The others shared his amusement, but didn’t feel like voicing it when Bifur’s obvious amusement was met with a stony glare from the old warrior.  
“At least he can get a hand on her,” Fili said a little sullenly, still nursing his prickling arm.  
“Nori’s wrestling her,” Kili dismissed. “You brought a sword to a knife fight.”  
“Which should have been in my favor,” Fili protested, though the rest of his remark died in his throat at the sight of Nori pinning Lucy. She wriggled calmly at first, her face a knot of concentration, and when she figured out she really couldn’t get free of Nori’s weight, she gave a few experimental thrashes, like a landed fish, to see if she could unseat him that way. No luck. Lucy went still with a sigh.  
The dwarves laughed, Bofur applauding. Lucy rolled her eyes but began laughing, her stomach jumping under Nori’s arm. He grinned at her, rolling away easily. “Teach me that,” she demanded immediately, rising to her feet easily.  
Thorin chose that moment to enter, followed closely by Balin and Gandalf, Bilbo trailing them. Those already present stilled. “We must remain here a fortnight,” the king said without preamble, scowling. “There are runes to be read on our map, but they can only be read in the light of the moon by which they were written. That moon falls in two weeks’ time.”  
“Moon runes,” Ori gasped, but he was the only dwarf whose reaction was less than irritated.  
“Two weeks eating leaves?” Kili demanded, and Ori’s look of wonder morphed into a frown. “Listening to harp music?”  
“Let me guess,” Lucy said, stretching her neck. “Dwarves favor . . . drums?”  
“We are lucky that the moon we require comes so soon,” Gandalf said sternly, clearly displeased that no one else had viewed the event as fortuitous. “We could easily have been made to linger here for the better part of a year, had Fate warranted it.”  
“I quite like it here,” Bilbo offered, looking around for support. “It’s lovely, isn’t it, and Elrond has invited us all to a recital of poetry that promises to be most –”  
“Mahal save us all from Elvish poetry,” Dwalin groaned. “Have ye not heard it, Master Baggins? Terrible stuff, all pining and weeping.”  
“Are we supposed to know Elvish?” Kili asked Fili, frowning.  
“We’re supposed to, yes,” he replied, and Lucy laughed. “No surprise you don’t.”  
Kili shrugged off the jibe, turning to Lucy. “I much prefer limericks – what was the one you told yesterday? The one about the lady of the night from –” Lucy sent an elbow into his ribs, blushing under Thorin’s glare, and Kili laughed even as he held the spot that had been elbowed. It’d hurt.  
The poetry reading was indeed awful, for most of them – only Gandalf, Bilbo, Lucy, Balin, and Ori had any interest. Kili was glad, however, that while Lucy spent most of the performance sitting forward on her floor cushion, the very image of rapt attention, she occasionally shifted to her right, closer to him, and murmured the opening line of some limerick or another. Remembering the subsequent lines made him choke down laughter, every time, grateful for the distraction even when Thorin gave him dark looks. Oh, of course, the king could be as discourteous to the elf lord as he liked, but as soon as Kili was a little rude . . . Fili kept squinting at Lucy around his brother, suspicious, but every time she either ignored the blond prince or returned his look with one of just-wide-eyed-enough innocence.  
The elves didn’t keep them long, noting the yawns and drifting eyelids. Lucy was particularly relieved to make it back to the room, since she was one of the ones with droopy eyelids, but was stalled at the door by the elf she’d begun to think of as their babysitter – Beleg, she recalled.  
“Are you comfortable with the accommodations?” he asked politely, in Sindarin. Dwalin gave him a suspicious look as he edged by them into the room, paranoia aroused by the unfamiliar language.  
“I am quite so, thank you,” Lucy replied in the same, too tired to be startled, but wondering why he’d asked her, and not far-more-important Thorin or Gandalf. “Why?”  
“We only imagined you might wish a reprieve from the close quarters of the road,” he replied tactfully.  
She snorted, too tired to laugh, or to be polite. The presence of elves usually put her on her best behavior (which was still hardly impeccable), but the promise of a real mattress was tugging at her. “Perhaps I will have such a wish when I am not so tired that the nearest bed seems best,” she replied. “Though I thank you for your consideration.”  
Beleg murmured a polite goodnight, requesting that she mention the matter to him again, if she wished, and left, closing the door softly behind him.  
The Company quickly did a count of the beds and learned that there weren’t enough, but the dwarves distrusted the things anyway, much too large and much too high off the ground. They tended to sleep in familial groups, at least on the road, and clumped together this way again, dragging the mattresses off the beds and onto the floor. Dori, Nori, and Ori shared a mattress, neighboring Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur. Dwalin and Balin pulled Bilbo down beside them. Oin and Gloin sharing a mattress butted up against Thorin’s, which in turn left Fili and Kili to the last unoccupied pallet. Gandalf was absent, though no one seemed to know why, and Lucy dropped her pack beside Fili’s with a yawn. It had become entirely usual for the four youngsters to sleep together on the road, bedrolls lined up side-to-side, although Lucy was usually on the outside of the line with Ori at her side. They’d fallen into the pattern without thinking after the past fortnight or so, after riding altogether all day long, and it wasn’t until she’d already flopped down beside Kili that Lucy felt the weight of Thorin’s gaze on her. Again.  
It seemed best to ignore it. Sure, now that someone else had taken issue with her choice of bed, it seemed obvious that the proper thing to do was gather her (now-heavy-feeling) things, marching out to the (very-far-away) hallway, request a room of her own from Beleg, follow where she was led (probably even farther), and go to sleep there.  
Or she could ignore Thorin and nestle deeper into the mattress, which was soft enough that it didn’t hurt to lie face-down, and smelled pleasantly of lavender.  
Kili threw himself down beside her, sending a wave through the mattress that bounced both her and Fili. His brother made a sound of complaint, whacking him hard with a pillow, but Kili was too tired to retaliate, instead yawning theatrically.  
Someone was putting out the lanterns, bless them, and Thorin seemed too exhausted to bother with Lucy (she was glad, having half-expected to be dragged to her feet by the back of her shirt), and even more thankfully, no one seemed to want to strip down for bed. That, of course, could have been because of her, and of course if she had her own bed she could sleep naked – not a practice she usually cared for, but the sheets in Rivendell were incredible.  
Sighing contentedly, Lucy felt someone draw a blanket over her – Bifur, though she didn’t see it, pausing in his circuit of the room as he put out the lights. She was asleep before he extinguished the last one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. The mentions of Dwalin and Nori's past is a reference to "Your Axe to My Throat, My Knife to Yours" by Thorinsmut. It's awesome. I suggest you read it. I don't know how to embed a link here, or I would.  
> 2\. If anyone has yet noticed my odd tic of only sometimes capitalizing certain nouns, which are typically capitalized in-universe (Orcs, Dwarves, Men, et al), that's because this is more or less from Lucy's viewpoint, and she was never socialized to lend those words the same importance as those from this universe, i.e. every other character, for whose speech, thoughts, etc., I do capitalize.  
> Also, I know Tolkien probably didn't intend to create a gender-biased language construction by referring to all humans as Men (though who can say, he was a linguist, after all), but I just can't hold with it. So, Humans. There's a similar problem with male dwarves being referred to as dwarves and females as dams, but I don't know how to get at that one and it would involve a lot of 'Find and Replace' and reposting. So perhaps I will leave it alone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rivendell and the goblin caves  
> Music: "Sister" by Mumford and Sons during the conversation with Gandalf in Rivendell; no good fit for the goblin caves came to mind, but the closest was "Bleeding Out" by Imagine Dragons. "Not Gonna Die" by Skillet is another good-ish fit, because that's kind of Lucy's anthem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: torture by goblins, post-traumatic stress.

Kili woke to the sound of whimpering almost directly in his ear. It was the slow, uncritical awakening of someone thoroughly in need of sleep, whose mind is unconvinced of the need to wake; he wobbled on the edge of wakefulness and sleep, not firmly lodged in either.  
Something bumped against his chest, but lightly, nudging him a little towards waking.  
And then there was the voice: gruff but immediately familiar, unobtrusive. “Lucy,” Dwalin said softly. “C’mon lass, wake up, now, there ye are. There’s a lass . . .”  
Kili’s eyelids slitted open without his permission, just barely, when there was a gasp. It took his mind a moment to cobble the darkness into the empty space of the room, and Dwalin’s hulking silhouette.  
Dwalin was making hushing noises now, soft ones, that tickled at the back of Kili’s memory, from when he was a toddler on the warrior’s knee. “It’s alright,” he crooned. “There ye are . . . see? It’s all jus’ fine, now . . .”  
The smaller dark shape in his field of view shifted, heaved upright. There was another gasp, a long, shuddering one like the one voicing it was on the edge of tears. “I-I’m sorry,” Lucy whispered, so quietly Kili almost didn’t hear.  
The ragged edge in her voice dragged Kili closer to the surface of his mind, but he didn’t move, afraid to reveal that he was awake.  
“No need for that, now.”  
“No-no, I didn’t mean to w-wake any–” Lucy cut herself off; she hated to stutter and stammer, but she was shaking hard. Kili could feel it as a fine vibration in the mattress, the room too dark for him to see it.  
I shouldn’t see any of this. He quickly closed his eyes, stomach sinking. He was awake now, couldn’t go back to sleep, but clearly couldn’t say anything now.  
“You didn’t mean aught at all, sleeping as you were,” Dwalin said, his voice low, as close to soft as he could manage.  
“Don’t think that I’m weak.” She sounded weak, Kili couldn’t help note, though of course he didn’t think she was. A deep, uneven breath. “I’m not.”  
“’Course not, lass. The warrior’s dreams, we call ‘em. After battle, after ye’ve counted up the dead . . .”  
“Yes.” A pause. “Something like that.”  
Kili couldn’t hear what Dwalin said, but his eyes opened a fraction, despite his will, at the shift of weight on the mattress, and even in the dark he could tell that Lucy was in the warrior’s arms, on his lap, tucked into him like a child. “It was the orcs,” she said, her voice a rasp. “S-seeing them today, I –”  
“Had a brush with them before, did ye?” Kili never thought he’d hear sympathy in Dwalin’s rough voice.  
Lucy snorted quietly, even in her fear, even in the stillness of the sleeping room – or was everyone now awake, like Kili, trying desperately to pretend that they were not, that they could not hear this painful, private discussion? He screwed his eyes closed, but could do nothing about his ears. “It was a more of a collision,” she whispered, and her voice cracked a little and Kili felt it like a splinter in his heart. He felt like the scum of the Earth, listening to this, but Mahal help him, it was impossible not to, not unless he drew the pillow over his head to block the sound and then they’d know, and he dreaded causing Lucy embarrassment more than he dreaded drawing Dwalin’s ire.  
“Oh, lass,” Dwalin said, despairingly but quietly.  
“It’s just a dream,” Lucy whispered. “Not – I –”  
“Hush,” Dwalin insisted. “I’ve the dreams myself, from time to time. I don’t think poorly of you.”  
There was a moment of silence, and Kili tried to coax himself into unconsciousness.  
Then: “Azanulbizar?” Lucy guessed, softly. “You’re old enough . . .”  
“Aye, and Balin, too.” He sighed heavily. “I hate to say, the dreams’ll never leave ye. It’s been long enough, for me to know.”  
“I figured,” Lucy murmured, and Dwalin began to hum because it was too quiet for singing, and after a few minutes the familiar tune soothed Kili, too – he remembered it, that same tug at the back of his mind, from when he was very, very young and Dwalin coddled him, was over at their house all the time in the place of his absent father. Those were his earliest memories, and they were snug and warm, unlike Fili’s, Fili who had a much harder time believing that they’d never had a father at all, which was, of course, what must be said and done.  
They lured him down, the warm, snug memories, until he forgot all about Lucy and Orcs and dropped back over the edge into sleep.

 

In the morning, Kili opened his eyes to see Lucy, lying next to him with her face pillowed awkwardly on her wrist. She’d lost her pillow, somehow, in the night, and her arm stood in for the job. It had smashed the hill of her cheek up into a bulge under her eye that he would normally have found funny, but his memory of the night before was intact, immediately present, and sobering.  
She looked alright now, though. Of course, it was hard to tell how someone was, with their face relaxed in sleep, but surely the fact that it was relaxed, and she wasn’t whimpering, was a good sign?  
Kili didn’t know. He’d never had any warrior’s dreams, had never seen battle or anything else that could traumatize him – except, of course, when he was far, far too young to remember, and officially that had never happened at all.  
He’d been woken by the stirring of Fili on his far side, who was always awake despicably early in the morning. The other early birds were also awakening, trying not to disturb those who liked to sleep later, but it was a doomed endeavor. Fili woke Kili, who woke Lucy just by staring at her: first her eyes shuttled under their lids, lashes fluttering once, twice, and then her eyes opened, squinting at him in confusion – Where’s Ori?  
Then she closed them again to yawn. There was a furious red splotch on her cheek from being crushed against her wrist, crusty sleep in the corners of her eyes. Lucy noticed Kili staring and rubbed at them, a little discomfited by someone else’s attention before she’d had time to wash her face, and he quickly got up, stumbling into Fili as he tried to hop into his boots without untying the laces first. Fili hit Thorin, who grumbled at the both of them, and the grumbling woke anyone else who’d managed to sleep so far.  
Lucy sat up, looking around with her usual interest. Nori was complaining that Ori had drooled all over his shoulder, Bifur signing animatedly to a drowsy Bofur, Balin and Bilbo discussing the benefits and shortcomings of vegetables for breakfast. All was well.  
Even with Dwalin, who only gave her his usual nod. If he thought her weak for the previous night, it didn’t show. Even though – Lucy shuddered – she’d half-thrown herself into his lap and cried into his furs like a scared little girl.  
The memory was horrifying; she looked away, standing up and putting her hands on her waist to crack the joints of her back. They crackled merrily, Fili starting at the sound and then laughing. Kili smiled, seeming preoccupied, and Lucy felt a flicker of worry – did he hear me did I wake him up – before he wondered aloud if the elves put aside eggs as well as meat, because they were hardly the same and he could settle for a few eggs, were bacon and sausage not an option.

 

Lucy’s first action of the day, after breakfast was eaten (with much hue and cry over the lack of even eggs), was to request a room to herself – even though Gandalf had been quick to point out to them, after everyone was awake, that the second door in their room led to an adjoining room, and there had in fact been enough beds for everyone to have their own. Lucy had been momentarily surprised by the number of beds in the two rooms, but quickly remembered that virtually no one else in the world traveled alone. Just her. Everyone else was a member of a party of some sort, when they wandered far from home.  
Of course, she didn’t have a home, either.  
Her room was only down the hallway from the others’, and had a lovely balcony from which she could shout down to the other room, which she, Kili, Fili, and Ori were quick to exploit, until Thorin bellowed for them to stop. He claimed it was too early in the morning for their antics, though it was no longer early, but really the idea of two weeks with the elves had frayed his temper.  
She then spent a lazy day in the library with Ori while the princes wandered off to explore. Lucy had an only-slightly-unfounded suspicion that “explore” was code for “wreak quiet havoc”, and wanted to go along, but Ori looked up at her so plaintively, when she moved to go with them, that she ended up settling right down again. He looked very small amid all of the large elvish books, and neither of his brothers had any interest in staying with him. Nori wanted to see the armory with Dwalin and a few others, and Dori was more interested in observing elf craftsmen, merchant that he was.  
Which left Lucy stumbling over the Sindarin script, which she had only half-learned to read in the first place, and her recall of which was now dulled by several years’ disuse. Ori was thankfully patient, peering around her arm (as he was too short to peer over her shoulder) to answer question after question.  
It was a nice day, in the end, finished with a filling, if leafy, dinner on the terrace and a warm bath. There were more elves there, this time, and they were as discreet as ever, but the presence of many others made Lucy too uncomfortable to linger. She ended up back in her own room before she was tired, wondering what the dwarves were doing, if Fili and Kili were teasing Bilbo, if Gandalf was brooding over a lit pipe, and when she finally lay down to go to sleep the room felt quite large and empty around her.  
Ridiculous, she told herself, and went to sleep.

 

After another two of three days, Kili decided that Lucy was fine. She had the nightmares, but so did Dwalin and Balin and Bifur and even Thorin – a good number of the strong, hearty Dwarves he knew, now that he thought about it, and they all functioned just fine. It helped, of course, that Lucy was quick to help him rig a pail of water above the doorway of one of the Elves’ lesser-used pantries, so that when some unsuspecting under-cook went to retrieve a rarely-used item they’d be soaked to the skin. (And if Lucy was concerned about the pail hitting the elf in the head, she assured herself that the pail was very lightweight and elves sturdier than they looked, with excellent healers.)  
It helped that she had no qualms about them breaking down furniture for firewood, the third night. “It’s lovely, but not important art,” she said when a distressed Ori asked her how she could go along with it. “The elves are immortal, Ori, they could probably use more to do.”  
It helped that she learned all the words to a few bawdier Dwarvish songs around the fire, when the older Dwarves were too drunk on elf wine to mind themselves so closely. And it helped that Lucy had swiped the wine herself, giggling her way in and out of the cellar while Fili and Kili hissed over their shoulders for her to hurry up already, anxiously guarding the door.  
It was stupid of him to look at her differently after what he saw, Kili realized, because Lucy had been just as fit and as damaged before he saw it, as she was now. He’d learned something new; she hadn’t changed at all. She was the same laughing, joking, daring, secretive person. It had been foolish to worry otherwise.

 

Lucy liked Rivendell, and she liked having time not on the road to spend time with her new friends, and she liked having friends again. The luxury of it was amazing to her – better than running headlong at full speed just for the childish rush of it, better than indulging in Bilbo’s most extravagant cooking, better than Gandalf’s impossible fireworks, better than sleeping naked between Rivendell’s guest sheets.  
She sparred with Dwalin, learned new tricks from Nori (in wrestling, yes, but also lock-picking and pick-pocketing), wreaked havoc with Fili and Kili, read with Ori, swapped stories with Gandalf, reminisced with Bilbo about Hobbiton (she did love it there, nearly as much as he did, largely because nothing bad ever seemed to happen there), traded jokes and trivia with Bofur.  
And she kept careful track of the days, because she knew that otherwise they would become a dreamlike blur, and she didn’t want the end to sneak up on her.  
Which was how she knew that she came across Kili on one of the public balconies on the sixth day. It was fairly common to cross paths with any of the Company, but to find Kili alone, and looking serious, was another thing entirely.  
“What are you doing?” she asked, keeping the concern out of her voice as she walked onto the balcony to greet him.  
He blinked down at her, surprised to have been snuck up on, and for once given the height advantage by his position seated on the balcony rail, his back to the wall it joined with. “Thinking,” he said, and held up a small black something.  
Lucy stepped closer to look, hoisting herself up onto the railing. Her perch was less stable, without the brace of the wall, the world spiraling away below her, but she didn’t glance down. To compensate, she kept one leg inside, straddling the wide railing. With the closer look, she could see that Kili held a slick black stone, tumbled smooth, which he readily handed over when she held out a curious hand.  
“Good luck charm?” she guessed, the dwarvish runes unfathomable to her. She could identify them as Khuzdul, but that was the extent of her skill on the matter.  
“Something like that.” Kili watched her study the object. Her hair was braided back, oddly, since in Rivendell she seemed to favor wearing it loose, the dark locks liberally interwoven with small white flowers. He suspected an Elf’s hand in the work. Otherwise, she looked like her usual self, wearing a slight frown of concentration as she held the stone up to the sunlight, as if that would reveal more to her. “My mother gave it to me,” he elaborated, glancing down. His nervous fingers, relieved of the stone, fidgeted with the laces of his tunic.  
Lucy’s chest felt suddenly hollow. “But not for luck?”  
Kili’s smile was different than usual, smaller, almost sad. He glanced out over the valley. “To remind me I promised to come back to her.” Watching Lucy frown at the runes, his smile widened. “She worries,” he explained, with more of his usual cheer. “Thinks I’m reckless.”  
Lucy smiled, too, but she couldn’t shake the hollow feeling. “Rightly so,” she said, returning the stone. Without it to fidget with, her fingers went to the golden device at her neck, though she didn’t normally touch it, didn’t like to be reminded. “My grandparents gave me this,” she explained to Kili, catching his curious look. She drew the pendant out from her neck to smile down at it. “It was my grandmother’s mother’s.”  
“What is it?” Kili asked, and Lucy unclasped the gold chain and handed him the necklace. He squinted at the oval charm – so small, only the size of Lucy’s smallest fingertip – able to make out a form that could have been Elf or Dwarf or Hobbit but was most likely Human, wearing robes and holding arms outstretched in a gesture of welcome and protection. All of the detail, however, had been worn away by time.  
“It’s the Mother,” Lucy said, and Kili looked closer, trying to discern feminine features on the tiny figure, but the face had been worn smooth. “In the religion of my grandparents, she is the woman who gave birth to a living god, the person through whom you may speak to god, the person to whom you may pray for strength.” She fiddled with the tail of her braid, plucking at one of the flowers until it came free, dropping it over the edge of the balcony to watch it fall.  
“I’ve never heard of her,” Kili said, which was unsurprising because theology lessons had always been boring enough, let alone when Balin began speaking about the theologies of other races. He liked the idea, though – a mother, all-powerful, strong enough to bear away pain and fear. “Do you pray to her?”  
It was a personal question, too personal, asked thoughtlessly, but Lucy replied before he could backpedal. “Sometimes,” she said truthfully, thoughtfully, watching another flower fall. “I don’t always believe in a god, but I usually believe in her.”  
Kili contemplated that statement. He’d never thought of faith as something that vacillated – there was Mahal, Aulë, and that was that. No wiggle room, no confusion, no questions. There was often a great deal of anger, in Dwarvish faith, but rarely doubt.  
“I always liked the idea of her,” Lucy admitted. “Kind, compassionate, strong, brave. People need more mothers like that.”  
“Fili and I have a mother like that,” Kili said – thoughtless of him to say, since Lucy obviously hadn’t had that kind of mother herself, but he was thinking of the weal on his mother’s arm where she’d burned away the name of –  
“Your father?” Lucy asked, and then winced, remembering how he and Fili had introduced themselves. They were taking turns at carelessness, it seemed, and Kili was relieved it wasn’t just him. “Sorry, I –”  
“We have no father,” Kili said. “There never was one.”  
At this, Lucy raised an eyebrow. “Did you spring from your mother’s brow fully formed?” she quipped.  
It was not a joke he understood, but he liked the idea. So would Dis, and he resolved to tell her when he got home. “Yes,” he decided firmly, and Lucy laughed.  
“So did I,” she admitted, glancing down at the necklace as Kili handed it back to her.  
There was no reply to make to that, not really, and so they sat in companionable silence, watching the sun move slowly over the gardens below.  
Hail Mary, full of grace, Lucy thought more than once, the Lord is with Thee. Blessed art Thou among women . . . 

 

Among her other daytime pursuits, Lucy took advantage of the fact that she and Ori often had the library to themselves to teach the young dwarf some basics of fighting. “I’m not supposed to,” he said nervously, the first time she put one of her spare knives in his hand.  
“I’m sure your brothers would rather be angry with the two of us for going behind their backs than they’d like to be angry with themselves for you dying of your own defenselessness,” Lucy said firmly, but not unkindly.  
Ori squared his jaw (unimpressive, since it had yet to harden with age) and stood a little straighter. “I know some things,” he said. “Nori taught me – some fighting, with hands, like you do, and a little with knives. It’s Dori who doesn’t like it. He never wanted me to turn out like Nori.”  
Lucy nodded. Nori was a dangerous dwarf, one who had spent years living on the fringes of their society, one whose presence had long been forbidden in the Ri household at Ered Luin. Their father had died in the fall of Erebor (Lucy wasn’t entirely sure in her understanding of the dwarvish legal workings that made Nori and Ori technically the sons of someone who’d died before their conception), their mother fifty years later. Dori had grown up fast, like Lucy herself, and it was understandable that after one of his charges went wild, he doubled down on the younger.  
She used to be the same way with Peter, when they were young, before their grandparents found it all out and took them in, but Peter had been more like Ori than Nori – compliant, good-natured, even-tempered, kind. She’d never had to worry about him. She was always the troublemaker, the one who ran their grandparents ragged.  
“You’ll turn out just fine,” Lucy assured him. “Now, first thing – the most important thing. Turn your knife like this.” She flipped hers in her hand, so the hilt was locked in her fist, blade pointed up.  
Ori copied the grip, frowning. “Nori says never hold it like this,” he said, confused. “It restricts your possible movements.”  
“Hush,” Lucy said, undeterred. Her eyes were darker than usual, Ori noticed, and he quieted accordingly, suddenly nervous. “Listen. If you’re about to be captured, and your captors aren’t . . . honorable, you need to be prepared. It’s one thing if you’re a prisoner of war, to be bargained for and returned home, or if you’ll be ransomed, but it’s another if your captors are dishonorable. Insane. Cruel. If they just like to watch things hurt.” She paused, watching Ori’s fearful face. “Like orcs.”  
The scribe blanched. “What – what are you saying?”  
“I’m saying, that if that happens, you slit your own throat,” Lucy said levelly, watching Ori flinch. “Drive the point in just behind your ear and rip it around to the same point on the other side.” She demonstrated without touching her knife to her skin. “You start on the far side of your neck, so as your arm falls, or tries to jump away from the task, it takes the knife with it, and finishes the job.”  
Ori was the color of oatmeal. “I don’t think I could do that,” he confessed, his hands visibly trembling.  
“You could,” Lucy said, eyes distant. “You’d be surprised at what you can do, when you have to.” She blinked, attention to returning to the present. “And don’t forget anyone you’re traveling with, if they’re injured or bound and can’t do for themselves.”  
“Right,” Ori said, fingers tightening anxiously on the grip of the knife, but he didn’t think he could ever do that to himself or someone else, and he wondered what in Aulë’s name had happened to Lucy in her vaguely delineated past. 

 

Lucy’s hair was done up in flowers again on the tenth day, Kili noted with some worry. “Did you do this yourself?” he asked lightly, plucking at one of the flowers as the Company walked to dinner.  
“No, Aredhel did,” she said, flicking the braid absent-mindedly over her shoulder, out of his reach. “A friend of mine here,” she elaborated when he looked confused. The dwarves kept elf names straight about as well as the elves could keep dwarf names straight, though the dwarves didn’t have the excuse of rhyming confusion. The two groups also had trouble telling individuals of the other party apart, elves claiming that beards hid distinguishing features and dwarves claiming that the elves all looked alike. Lucy had to give them some leeway there, as the elves were lovely, but often androgynous, and favored a mild conformity of dress and hairstyle.  
She was distracted from Kili by Ori asking if she’d read the book he’d set aside for her in the library, something easy to read so she could practice reading Sindarin without frustrating herself into a fit.  
“What now?” Fili asked his brother, catching his peeved look.  
“An Elf braided Lucy’s hair,” Kili reported, and Fili promptly looked for Lucy in their group, confused and interested.  
“Really? Are they courting?”  
“I don’t know,” Kili said quickly. “I just don’t think it’s wise. You know what Elves are like. Uncle’s always going off about them.”  
Fili’s frown deepened. “But Lucy likes them. She’s stayed here before. Gets along with them, though I don’t know how . . .”  
“That’s not the point,” Kili said, and his brother gave him a mystified look.  
“Then what is?” he asked, but they had, thankfully, reached the terrace, and Kili didn’t have to come up with an answer.  
“That’s a very pretty braid, Lucy,” Bofur noted after dinner, when they were all back in the Company’s main room, smoking or playing quiet games.  
“Thanks,” she said, unwinding the lower portion with care. “Aredhel did it for me.” More like to her, since Lucy hadn’t been able to think of a polite way to turn down the offer, but wasn’t really a fan of carrying half a garden in her hair. The elf maiden was fascinated by the curl of it, though, since elves, for the most part, had pin-straight hair, and it seemed rude to turn down the offer. She knew Aredhel from the year that she’d lived with the elves, and the other had seemed so pleased to see her again . . .  
She looked around in surprise at the scattered snickers, Bofur going so far as to whistle. “What?”  
“That’s courtin’ talk,” Dwalin explained. He wasn’t amused, like his brother; instead, he looked grim at the suggestion.  
Lucy laughed. “Aredhel’s female.”  
“So?” Bofur asked bluntly, to more chuckles.  
Lucy shook her head impatiently, loosened flowers tumbling down. “I don’t fancy other women,” she said, brushing them into a pile, “and I don’t fancy elves, and I don’t know what braiding my hair has to do with any of it.”  
“I’d reckon Aredhel does,” Nori said, rewarded by Lucy throwing a handy boot at his head. He dodged easily, laughing.  
“You’re all children,” Lucy said, but she was blushing. “I don’t – humans –”  
“Just dodge Aredhel from now on and you’ll be fine,” Kili advised, grinning around the stem of his pipe. The information that Lucy didn’t go for the Fair Folk was a relief – they were wily, too uptight for their own good, with awful food. Any friend would have been upset to think their friend was courting one.  
Lucy muffled a small groan of embarrassment behind her hand, but it didn’t go unheard, more laughter at her expense rippling through the room. “I don’t understand, either,” Bilbo piped up, looking around for an explanation. “A woman, I mean an elf, braided her friend’s hair. Why –?”  
“Among some of the Free People, different customs carry different meaning,” Balin said simply, smiling at Lucy’s still-red face. Her cheeks were so hot they smarted. “To Dwarves and Elves, the complex traditional braids can’t usually be accomplished alone, and so the assistance of someone very close and very trusted is required.” This made immediate sense to Lucy, offering an explanation for a phenomenon that she had previously assumed to be a quirk: every few days, on the road, the dwarves let down their braids and combed them out for re-fashioning, same as Lucy did with her single, practical braid, but instead of doing the styles up again themselves, someone else usually lent a hand. Kili braided Fili’s hair almost every other day, and Ori was lucky to make it two days without Dori wrestling him under a comb.  
“A parent, a sibling, a lover . . .” Balin continued, unable to keep from teasing a little. There was another groan from Lucy, who was now undoing the small, intricate braids near her temples as quickly as possible, not daring to ask anyone for help. She wasn’t embarrassed by the idea of a female lover, but her own social gaffe was so appalling. If she couldn’t avoid Aredhel until they left, she’d have to explain, and . . .  
Gandalf chuckled at her distress, knowing full well how hard Lucy tried to get by in the unfamiliar world. She was rude when it suited her purposes, or when she had decided not to care, but never accidentally. “Be still, Miss Bell,” he said, moving to sit beside her. “There’s been no real harm done.”  
“I feel bad for Aredhel,” Lucy muttered into her hands, finally free to cover her face as the wizard set to work on the fine braids, frowning at their complexity. Bilbo joined him, his smaller fingers very deft – as befitted a burglar.  
“I assure you, she will recover,” Gandalf said astutely. “Your hair, however, is another matter. Bilbo, see if you can make sense of this knot here.”  
Lucy replaced Aredhel’s painstaking work with her usual pragmatic French braid when her hair was finally loose again, eager to work out some of her mortification through sparring. Dwalin and Nori took up the floor for a long time, and then Fili and Kili. Fili was the more skilled fighter, but Kili had a tendency to behave unpredictably, breaking unexpectedly from battle patterns to send the butt of his axe into his brother’s ribs or some other unorthodox move that had Thorin yelling from the sidelines to be careful! and fight like a proper Dwarf, Kili, for the love of Mahal!  
Fili won two of three matches and left the floor anyway, shaking his head and muttering Khuzdul swearwords. Lucy got to her feet before anyone else could, stepping into the cleared space and eyeing her opponent thoughtfully. She and Kili hadn’t sparred yet – as many fighters as the Company boasted, it was easy for such a thing to happen. She hadn’t fought Bifur, yet, either (although that was more deliberate, since she was leery of upsetting the axe head lodged in his skull).  
“Who’s your money on?” Nori asked Fili as he settled in beside the other spectators.  
“My brother, of course.”  
Nori grimaced. “It’s your loss,” he said, and then clapped the prince on the shoulder. “I’ll give you good odds, aye?”  
Fili shook his head out of loyalty, but he knew why Noir felt that way. Lucy was taller, but slighter than Kili, so they were about even there, but she was also faster even than him, who was lean and quick by Dwarf standards. Kili’s greatest advantage was his unpredictability, but Lucy was equally unpredictable, with her foreign fighting style, and with the axe to weigh Kili down . . .  
The prince moved first, of course, and Lucy slid out of the way, not even bothering to touch the axe. Too heavy, better to avoid it altogether.  
Ori was practically bouncing in his seat between his brothers, his fingers flying over his sketchpad. “I wish I could ask them to stop moving,” he fretted, making Dori, Nori, and Fili laugh. “I haven’t drawn them yet, I want it to look –” He flinched at the sound of metal striking stone as Kili swung too hard with the axe, only to hit the floor, Dwalin bellowing from the sidelines.  
“Durin’s hammer, Kili, not so hard!” he shouted. “Ye don’t want to hurt the lass!”  
“Sorry!”  
“I’m fine!”  
Lucy sidestepped a much gentler swing, calculating, and moved into the blind spot created by the motion, but was shocked when the prince abandoned his weapon to clatter against the floor (bringing cries of irritation from both his mentor and his uncle) and grabbed Lucy around the middle with both arms. She thrashed, taken off guard, and then sent an elbow into a place one did not want an elbow, and slipped free.  
“What under Earth are ye doin’?!” Dwalin yelled. “Ye’ve got no weapon!”  
Kili ignored him, grinning at Lucy, whose mouth twisted into a challenging smile as she studied his wrestling stance. Not as wide as Nori’s, which was a mistake, because Kili was taller.  
She turned the force of his next lunge against him, flipping him over her shoulder – oh shit he’s heavier than I thought – but not with enough force, her head hitting the stone floor inches from his. They both groaned, and then rolled apart, back on their feet.  
“Someone’s going to get hurt,” Thorin sighed, rubbing his face. Dwalin gave a short nod, frowning.  
“I’ll break ‘em up, myself, if it comes to that,” he assured the king, shifting forward so he could spring to his feet when necessary, which looked like it might be soon as Kili managed to hoist Lucy over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. She bit his ear, and he dropped her with a curse, Lucy seeming to bounce off the floor, she regained her feet so quickly.  
“What did you say about odds?” Fili asked Nori lightly, as Kili caught Lucy in a good, solid Dwarvish headlock, but his pride was short-lived, because Lucy did something unseen that had Kili dancing away from her with a yelp, shaking out his fingers like they’d been stepped on.  
“That hurt!”  
“Sorry!”  
Thorin sighed heavily, shifting in his (oversized) chair. “Alright, now, break it up,” Dwalin said warningly, as Kili took a sloppy swing at Lucy, who came up under it to slam into his torso like a small battering ram. It threw them both to the floor again, Lucy quickly scrambling to get away and Kili clambering after to get his slippery opponent into any hold he could, legitimate or no. He got an elbow to the nose for his trouble, which stung like fire ants even though it didn’t bleed, but for the trouble he got a pin on one of Lucy’s arms.  
“They’re not even fighting anymore,” Nori observed, laughing. “They’re grappling like children in the mud.”  
This was corroborated by Lucy yanking on Kili’s hair, which he met with a knock of his forehead against hers, a gesture of affection that left her momentarily cross-eyed, while she tried to get a leg into his gut and he tried to keep that from happening without letting go of her arms, because if she pinched him again it would hurt even worse than a halfhearted knee to the gems –  
“I said enough,” Dwalin said, grabbing Kili by the back of his neck and lifting him. Lucy tried to squirm away, but he grabbed her by the shoulder strap of her jerkin, which was sturdy enough to withstand the treatment. He gave them both a light shake, like puppies. Kili tolerated the treatment with a grin, far used to it, but Lucy was twisting under Dwalin’s grip. “Ye’re not even sparrin’, anymore, ye’re brawlin’ like dogs after a bone.”  
“She started it,” Kili said quickly, grinning.  
“I did not! You dropped your axe!” Lucy wrinkled her nose at him, this close to sticking out her tongue.  
“I’d knock your silly heads together, but I don’t think Lucy’s could take it,” Dwalin sighed. He released them both. “Go sit, ye mad creatures.” They turned to sit with the Fili and brothers Ri, Lucy promptly punching Kili in the shoulder when Dwalin turned away. He retaliated by bumping his shoulder against hers so hard she stumbled, and they were laughing as they dropped down beside Fili, both of them sweaty and a little breathless.  
“You’re acting like children,” he informed them, chin up because Thorin was watching them from across the room, eyes narrowed.  
“Oh, right, because you didn’t lick Dori’s teacup this morning,” Kili sneered, and Dori leaned around both of his brothers to give them an enraged glare.  
“You what?”  
“I didn’t,” Fili lied quickly, digging an elbow into his brother’s ribs that had Kili leaning away from it, into Lucy, even as he laughed. She giggled, shoving him away with no real motivation, and he realized that while she was pretty enough kitted out in her road gear, squinting in the sunshine, Lucy was beautiful when she was wedged up against him and shaking with laughter, her eyes bright with it as she grinned at him. It was a surprise that made him forget to push back, and he tumbled into Fili, who pushed at him with much more anger, until Thorin yelled at them to behave, Lucy hiding from his glare behind Kili, her forehead pressed against his back as she shook with silenced laughter, her fingers curled around his arm just above the elbow.  
“She’s quite a good fighter, Lucy,” Kili remarked when Gandalf and Lucy had long left for their own rooms, Bifur had long doused the lamps, and most of the dwarves around them were long snoring.  
“Oh, aye, when she fights,” Fili yawned. “Instead of scrapping.”  
Kili grinned in the dark. He liked scrapping, still got up to it with Fili and Ori, at least when his brother wasn’t in one of his grown-up moods. “And she’s quite pretty,” he added, as an afterthought. “Don’t you think?”  
Fili shifted beside him, immediately alert. “Don’t,” he warned.  
“What?” Kili forced a yawn. “I’m just saying.”  
“Well, don’t.” Fili flipped onto his back again. “Don’t say anything else, Kili. Go to sleep.”  
And he did, but not for a while, rubbing the palm of his hand where he could still feel her braid sliding out of reach even as his fingers made a grasp for it.

 

Lucy couldn’t sleep. She paced for a while, and then took a much longer bath than necessary, floating in the dark until her fingers felt pruney. Then she read Ori’s book and practiced her Sindarin accent (which was recovering more of its former fluidity with each day in Rivendell, though Lucy wasn’t sure who to practice speaking with now that she was too embarrassed to face Aredhel) and ate a pear and cleaned her teeth again and finally she went to see if Gandalf was also still awake, and of course he was. Sitting serenely in the pale, bluish moonlight on the balcony of his room, puffing on a pipe. He nodded to see her, and Lucy climbed up onto the railing to sit, relieved. She admired the view of the valley from her perch, as it really was quite lovely at night – almost even more beautiful than during the day, perhaps because it ethereal appearance was enhanced by the moonlight.  
“Busy mind?” Gandalf asked after several peaceful moments.  
“Not really,” Lucy said, flexing her fingers so the knuckles popped. “My blood’s still up from the sparring, I think.”  
“You didn’t fight for very long,” Gandalf observed, and she shrugged.  
“Gandalf,” she said after another silence, “do you think it’s time I give up hope?”  
“It’s never time for that,” he replied. “But I suppose you mean to ask if you should make a life for yourself in this world.”  
Lucy nodded. It had been her question even before Gandalf’s letter of invitation landed in her lap, before she learned of the Quest and joined the Company.  
“There are those, even among my Order, who would say that you must submit to whatever Fate is allotted to you,” Gandalf said slowly, watching his smoke ring drift away. Lucy drew a leg (not the stabilizing leg inside the balcony railing) up to her chest, hooking her chin over her knee and watching the smoke dissipate. “Others would say that your Fate is your own to direct.”  
Lucy mulled that over for several moments. Being a pragmatic and self-possessed individual, she had never much cared for the concept of unavoidable destiny. But, on the other hand, the dogma of fate as each individual’s choice was clearly not accurate – otherwise how would she have fallen through the rabbit-hole, catapulted more than a world away from home? And how could she find a way back where there didn’t seem to be one?  
“What do you think, then?” Lucy asked finally. “Since you’ve told me what others would suggest.”  
Gandalf’s eyes lifted in a smile. “I would suggest that you do whatever will make you happy, Miss Bell,” he replied. “If you believe that you can only be happy in your world of origin, then you must pursue it until the end of your days. And if you believe that, for whatever reason, you cannot find it again, or cannot keep up your quest, then you must find a way to be happy here.”  
Lucy let her head tip back until it rested against the cool stone wall behind her. “Not a very noble pursuit, happiness. Especially not what I’d expect from a great wizard.”  
Gandalf chuckled. “I have found, in my many years and wanderings, that happiness is perhaps the most noble goal there is. Not greed or selfishness or ambition, those which often purport themselves as the route to happiness, but true, simple happiness. A contentedness and a quietude of being, which lends itself, in turn, towards compassion, honesty, bravery . . . and those are virtues worth having.”  
Lucy was quiet. She was compassionate and brave, honest when she could afford to be, and happy in the smaller capacities, the capacities of reading with Ori, laughing with Fili and Kili, sitting with Bilbo or Gandalf, enjoying sunshine, good food, a soft bed. But she wasn’t happy in the larger, deeper capacities, which were so hollow and immense that occasionally the void drove her to weeping. And sometimes she wondered, when she felt very empty and very tired, if one day it would be too much for her to enjoy jokes and fresh air and music. That had happened to her mother – by all accounts bright and beaming when she was young, but shriveled to a brittle, bitter husk before Lucy graduated elementary school.  
“I don’t know if I could be happy here,” Lucy admitted after much thought. “It’s – it’s still strange to me, here, to see dwarves and hobbits, speak of dragons, travel by foot and horseback, cook over a live fire. I don’t . . . I don’t know where I fit. I don’t belong anywhere.”  
“Mmm,” the wizard agreed, puffing thoughtfully at his pipe. “Well, for that matter, I would say that you fit and belong where you want to be, and where you are wanted. Everything else follows. And just as a preliminary suggestion, I believe Lord Elrond would be quite pleased to have you here. I expect that Aredhel would be happy, as well.”  
And he laughed as Lucy groaned, hiding her face behind her bent knee until her blush faded and she could get up to kiss Gandalf’s cheek before packing off to bed. 

 

The day of the moon needed to read the map finally arrived. Lucy packed her things, sure Thorin planned for them to disappear like thieves in the night. It made sense – the cautious, well-meaning elves would doubtless try to put a halt to their dangerous quest once they learned its nature. So far, their plan to retake Erebor had remained a secret, but Elrond was no fool, and Lucy was sure that he would know their intent the moment he read anything about a secret door.  
That was why she was less than happy to come across him as she wandered through a garden, taking in the sunshine. She froze like a startled rabbit, sure she’d give something away if they spoke, but he’d heard her approach.  
“Miss Bell,” he greeted her, turning from the vista of the valley, smiling.  
“Milord,” Lucy replied in Sindarin. “I did not mean to intrude.”  
“There is no intrusion,” the elf replied. “Please, join me.”  
Lucy sat where the sweep of his arm indicated, hitching one leg up onto the bench with the foot hooked under her other knee, so she could face the elf lord.  
“Has your stay here been pleasant?”  
“More than pleasant, as always, and as always, I am sincerely grateful for your generous hospitality.” Sindarin didn’t lend itself to simple statements; everything sounded flowery.  
Elrond nodded, pleased. “I take it, from your presence with this strange party, that you have had no great good fortune in your search, if I may inquire?”  
“None,” Lucy agreed, swallowing a sigh. “Though that is why I travel with the Company. My hope is that we will learn of something that may serve my interests as well as the dwarves’.” The reply was very carefully constructed to be true, without revealing anything Gandalf and Thorin had not told the elf lord.  
Elrond smiled, clearly amused. “How gifted you are, Miss Bell, at suitably answering an inquiry while truly revealing nothing.”  
Lucy blushed. “I mean no offense.”  
“None was taken,” he told her. “We will miss your peculiar talents, here, as I suspect your Company plans to move on very soon . . . while I cannot confidently speak for my people’s feelings regarding the presence of your friends, particularly the young princes.”  
Lucy laughed. She had had a hand in perhaps one too many pranks over the duration of the visit, many of which ended with the any combination of the four youngsters running down the elves’ hallways pitching and staggering with poorly-muffled laughter, hissing orders at each other to be quiet, ducking suddenly and yanking each other around corners and behind pillars as curious elves opened their door to investigate the ruckus.  
Elrond’s smile bordered on fond. He had found it quite refreshing to see Lucy act in a way becoming of her age. To an Elf, she was virtually a child, and yet, on her previous visits, she had always been as solemn as an elder.  
“Fortunate travels,” he wished her when Lucy excused herself to ready for dinner.  
“I’m only going to wash up,” Lucy said lightly, lapsing back into Westron in her surprise.  
Elrond smiled again. “And yet, somehow, I suspect that we may not find your Company among us in the morning.”  
Lucy hid a grin. “What a strange idea, milord, if I may be so direct,” she said, nodding deeply. “Kindly excuse me.”

 

The reading of the map had proved fruitful, Balin was pleased to report. They now knew the location of the door, and on what day they must stand before it, in order for it to be visible.  
Thorin was not as easily swayed by good news. “It will be a hard journey,” he told them all grimly. “We can no longer afford to dally, if we wish to reach the Mountain in time.”  
Lucy could have pointed out that firstly, their needing to hurry to reach the Lonely Mountain on the door-day was not conditional upon their knowing about said fact (in other words, they’d never been able to dally, whether or not they knew it), and secondly, that the door was not chief among their concerns. She held her council, though, Gandalf winking at her as if he knew of her contention.  
“We’ll leave before first light,” Thorin continued. “I did not like the Elf’s tone when he called this venture folly.”  
“He didn’t say folly,” Gandalf observed neutrally, and set his pipe firmly between his teeth when Thorin gave him a glare.  
“Excellent,” Kili said, smacking his hands and rubbing his palms together. “If I had to go one more day eating leaves –”  
“– listening to poetry,” Fili contributed.  
Lucy shook her head at them, but she was just as eager to be back on the road, moving towards the possibilities housed beneath Erebor’s floors.  
That night, she slept in the Company’s big room, as did Gandalf, so that they could awaken and move in the morning with as little disturbance as possible. Nori mapped exit routes on the floor with a borrowed stick of Ori’s charcoal, others listening intently to his plans and adding their two cents as they huddled around the fire. At some point, Beleg had reported that the Company was breaking down furniture for burning, and neat stacks of firewood (broken down to dwarf size) had since appeared inside the door once a day. What their hosts planned to do about the scorch mark on the balcony, Lucy had no idea.

 

By the time they were midway up the road out of the valley, dawn was touching the highest stones of its sheltering bluffs. “Be on your guard,” Thorin warned them all, as they neared the tops of the bluffs, the way out of the valley. “We’re about to step over the edge into the wild. Balin, you know these parts, lead on.”  
Bilbo stopped, as he grew breathless, to look back, and Lucy stopped beside him. “You’ll see it again,” she said confidently, although she was in no way confident of that fact.  
“Will we, though?” he asked, looking up at her with his small face pinched, and Lucy had no reply.  
“Master Baggins, Miss Bell,” Thorin called from ahead. He was grumpy because Gandalf had left the Company to embark on an investigation of an undisclosed nature. “I suggest you keep up.”  
Lucy rolled her eyes, which coaxed a reluctant smile out of Bilbo, and she squeezed his shoulder as they both turned back onto the path. She felt for the hobbit. He had nothing, really, to gain by this venture, except some element of self-definition. She had no idea how it was that that alone weighed against his trepidations. 

 

The next two weeks were physically grueling, as they moved up and up into the mountains. The less older and fit dwarves (the two not necessarily overlapping) felt the challenge more than the youngsters, but even Lucy had to admit that the pace and terrain were trying. The muscles of her calves in particular began to feel like painful rocks, and she worked the cramps out every night when they finally, blissfully made camp, and she was always too tired to care that the camps were now rocky enough to bruise a back, even through a bedroll. It was one week out from Rivendell – when one of her pack’s laces had snapped at around noon, but Thorin hadn’t want to stop for lunch, which forced Lucy to stop every ten minutes and readjust the stupid thing because the now-too-short laces had slipped out of their knot again – that she made a mistake.  
Fools didn’t reveal their secrets, but Lucy apparently did, if she was in a short enough temper.  
Bifur was tugging at Kili’s axe in obvious agitation only a few yards from Lucy where she, too, was stopped on the path (fixing her damned pack again), babbling in his ancient dialect of Khuzdul and signing away in Iglishmêk to compensate for the fact that Kili didn’t understand his words. “What?” the prince said repeatedly, with less patience in every iteration. “Look, where’s Bofur or Bombur, I can’t –”  
“He’s trying to tell you that the leather around that buckle’s wearing through,” Lucy snapped irritably – anything to shut them up, please – as she wrestled with her pack, and looked up at the stunned silence, because it came not just from Kili and Bofur, but from every single dwarf on the path.  
And more than one of them looked angry.  
“How’d you come to know that?” Gloin demanded, his hands flexing on the handle of his axe, and Lucy took an instinctive step back from the threat on his scowling face, glancing at the others for support . . . but, no, they looked almost universally pissed off. Even Dwalin looked suspicious. So did Fili, although Kili and Ori mostly seemed confused.  
Thorin was glowering murderously. “Answer,” the king commanded, and Lucy’s hands jumped to hover just above her waist – caught between holding them up in a gesture of harmlessness, or reaching for her own weapons.  
“I mentioned the Iron Hills, before, right?” The words unraveled of their own accord, no sense in lying now. “While I was there, there was a misunderstanding, I ended up in one of their jails, for a short time, on a technicality –” Someone growled at that, of course, but there was nothing for it. “– and there was a dam in the cell across from mine, and we got to speaking, and we decided it was best to break out, since if we remained in jail to be tried and sentenced who knew how long we’d be in prison or if I would even survive a sentence working in a quarry, and she taught me the signing so we could discuss the matter without the guards overhearing. That’s it. I swear.”  
Nori was now regarding her with the respect one professional afforded another, but most of the rest were still stone-faced. “Well,” Oin said slowly, the first to speak. “It was one of our own that taught it to her.”  
“That doesn’t matter,” Thorin snapped.  
“There’s no legal precedent,” Balin said thoughtfully. “It’s not a crime for her to know Iglishmêk. Not technically.”  
“What of practically?” Dori asked, frowning fastidiously.  
“It is a crime for her to break out of an Iron Hills jail,” Gloin pointed out.  
“Yes, but only within the jurisdiction of the Iron Hills,” Balin said, exasperated. “Look, the lass has done us no real wrong.”  
“She’s been eavesdropping on Bifur this whole time,” Bombur argued, though his cousin was quick to sign that he didn’t mind that at all, that he was glad someone else could understand him.  
“The whole reason we don’t let outsiders learn our speech is that they may use it to harm us,” Kili said musingly. “Lucy means us no harm.”  
“The reason is that Aulë gave our language to us and us alone,” Oin argued. “Though I believe we’re splitting hairs . . .”  
“Enough!” someone cried, and for once it was not Thorin. All eyes turned to Bilbo. “I don’t mean to be rude, and I hate to intrude upon what is clearly a very sensitive cultural issue, but the plain fact of the matter is that you’re either going to kill Lucy, or bring her along despite the fact that someone, somewhere, taught her a bit of signed language to serve their own purposes.”  
Thirteen pairs of eyes shuttled back to Lucy, who tried to look harmless. Bilbo was clever, she had to credit him that, the same as he’d been with the trolls – very clever to neglect mentioning the third option, which was to boot her from the Company and let her find her way back through the wilderness alone. She didn’t think for a second they’d kill her; it was the threat of being left behind that had her worried.  
“Keep moving,” Thorin said finally, and they did.  
Nori fell back to walk with the youngsters, who had closed ranks with Lucy once again – even if Fili was avoiding eye contact with her. “I’d be interested to hear how you got out of an Iron Hills jail cell,” he said, bright eyes taking in Lucy’s odd, but more or less unassuming appearance.  
“Perhaps another day,” she said, not wanting to discuss the matter with tempers still running hot.  
“What did you even do, to get arrested?” Kili asked curiously, not knowing that it was bad form to ask until Nori elbowed him and shook his head.  
“I happened to be in the same tavern as a man who hadn’t seen a woman for quite some time, vagabond that he was, and in that area of the world,” Lucy said, unruffled. “We disagreed over the boundaries of polite behavior, and whether or not he was entitled to put his hands on my person without my permission.”  
“How did that end with you in jail?” Fili asked, confused.  
Lucy offered him a smile that showed a few too many teeth, and he stumbled over a rock in the path, Kili catching him by the elbow. “I may have broken every bone in his hand,” she answered, and while Nori nodded in approval, there was no more talking for quite some time. 

 

Lucy knew from experience that the mountains just kept on going up, but several of the Company were beginning to express their disbelief that they hadn’t begun to descend from the range whose spine they walked. She wearily shared the sentiment, wondering that she’d ever made it over the peaks by herself. It wasn’t that the road was so hard, though it was, or food scarce, though it was, but that she hadn’t gone insane without any companions.  
The storm struck on what Lucy remembered to be the worst stretch of road, of course. The rain lashed them against the sheer rock face above, its mirror just inches from their feet. In the dark of the thunderclouds, Lucy couldn’t even fathom the drop to the ground, but if her memory served, it was fearsome. Bilbo would have found out firsthand, slipping on a slick rock, if Dwalin and Lucy hadn’t yanked him back. Thorin shouted the obvious, that they had to find shelter, and then there was the surreal sight of a massive boulder flying through the air and Mary help us, where did that come from? It struck above them, sending down a hail of debris that fell past them into the dark below.  
She couldn’t hear what Balin said, but she saw him point. And her blood suddenly felt a lot like the icy rain pelting her face. What the hell is that?  
Bofur cried the answer – “Stone giants!” just as someone else called for them all to hold onto the rock, and Lucy obeyed without questioning, flattening herself against the cold surface. An arm landed across her shoulders, securing her, and she turned to see Kili, squinting at her through the water running down his face.  
And then the path split in half, the stones groaning as they came to life, separating the Company clean down the middle with Fili reaching desperately across the forming void for his brother, who looked afraid for the first time since Lucy had met him. She screwed her eyes shut, not wanting to see whatever was going to happen, feeling sick at the seesaw of rock underfoot. She’d always been prone to seasickness, although she like amusement park rides fine, and apparently riding a stone giant fell closer to the former than the latter.  
The ride was short, the giant quickly smashing into the mountainside, and Lucy would have pitched off entirely, hands scrabbling over the rain-slick rock for purchase, if not for Kili’s fist in the hood of her cloak. Seeing Bofur move at her side, Lucy ran forward, Kili on her heels, to jump gratefully onto the stable rock the unwitting giant had brought them to, only to immediately feel it reel underneath them.  
“Lookout!” a voice cried over the rain, and she quickly lost track of what was happening, in the dark and the rain and the constant horrifying movement of the world underfoot, concentrating on gripping the rock, wedging herself against it, on holding fast to Kili, who was as wild-eyed and pale as Lucy felt.  
She noticed when their giant keened hard to one side, falling – the mountainside rushing towards them, too fast – Hail Mary, full of grace – and the impact, the juddering that shook her bones in the casings of her muscles, but which somehow, miraculously, left her intact, left them all intact – or at least gasping and shouting and crying out. Lucy shuddered in relief, pressing her face harder into the soft, wet mass that had to be someone’s chest or back, just as someone else was crushed into her back.  
She scrambled out of the pile at the cries about Bilbo hanging off the cliff, although Dwalin and Thorin had pulled him to safety by the time she regained her feet on the uneven stone, which was also dangerously sloped. Kili kept his hand knotted in her cloak, not entirely sure his cold fingers could unfurl, at this point, as Fili moved by with a clap to his brother’s shoulder, helping up those dwarves who were still sprawled gasping on the rock. “You’re alright?” Lucy asked Kili over her shoulder. They were both breathless and shaking, like everyone else, from the cold and wet and terror.  
“Yeah. You?” Kili searched her blinking, distracted eyes for assurance.  
“Just fine.” Lucy let him keep his grip on her, though, as Thorin stormed past, leading the way. Where he thought he was going, she had no idea, but there was really no choice for anyone of them except to follow.  
There was a cave not far ahead, though, and the Company crowded in gratefully. “Looks safe enough,” Dwalin opined.  
“Search to the back,” Thorin ordered Bofur and Bifur as they ducked through the narrow opening. “Caves in the mountains are rarely unoccupied.”  
It didn’t take long to confirm, however, that this one was. Lucy found that a bit odd, since it was spacious, and roomy, floored in sand that made a better bed than bare stone, but Thorin asked her what a human knew of stone caves when she voiced her thoughts aloud.  
And so began the nightly grouping into familiar clusters. Bifur, Bofur, Bombur. Oin, Gloin. Dwalin and Balin, joined, as usual, by Bilbo. Thorin, as usual, slept alone. Dori, Nori, Ori. Fili and Kili.  
It was going to a cold night, Lucy reflected unhappily.  
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Fili said, as if reading her mind, and Kili caught her by the wrist, tugging her down to the sandy floor.  
“Little in the middle,” he said around a yawn, the usual dwarvish manner of determining which party got the warmest spot in a sleeping situation, and Lucy was too exhausted to argue or question or worry about Thorin – who was, indeed, frowning at them. Instead she rolled onto her side, nose pressed to Kili’s shoulder, feeling Fili’s back line up with hers.  
Oh, if her grandfather could see her now. The religious old man would have had a conniption, platonic though the arrangement was. The idea made her smile, and despite the cold and the wet, it was less than five minutes before she fell asleep.

 

It was the groaning that woke her, the sounds of an old house settling or a ship at sea. Lucy ignored it in favor of more sleep, but now Thorin was shouting to wake up, and she did at the edge of fear in his voice, sitting up in time to see the dark, crooked line appear across the floor as the sand fell through.  
And then the floor split open, and they dropped. Briefly, and Lucy was glad, but still painfully, especially when one prince or the other landed squarely on top of her.  
“Get up!” “Look out, look out!” “Up! “Move!”  
She tried to obey all of the scattered, panicked orders at once, but it was impossible to do so in a writhing pile of other people all trying to do the same, and as it was she only caught scattered glimpses of slimy rock and firelight before the goblins were on them, squealing and snarling, malformed and clawed hands separating them out by force as they all screamed and shouted and grabbed for each other, trying to hold on, stay together. Lucy got ahold of a knife from her belt, got one goblin in the eye socket, another up under the chin, but there were so many, too many, that was the problem with goblins. They were like flesh-eating ants, swarming up over the edges of the cramped platform to replace any that the Company killed or threw off, and there was plenty of both happening even though there was no room to swing an axe or a sword. And so of course the Company was disarmed, overpowered, borne forward. Lucy cast around wildly, looking for familiar faces in the filthy, gray-green sea of goblins. Fili – Dwalin – Bombur – oh god where’s Bilbo, where’s Ori – Kili, Nori –  
She recognized the moment they stepped into (or rather, were pushed into) Goblin-town proper. It was massive, on a terrifying scale, a huge echoing cavern lined with shoddy wood-and-ligament construction and flickering orange torches. The Great Goblin was as obvious as his town. And even more repulsive. Lucy swallowed against a gag just at the sight of him. The goiter under his chin was the size of some of his smaller subjects.  
The goblins handling the intruders threw their weapons down in a clattering pile before his unstable-looking throne.  
“Who would be so bold as to come armed into my kingdom?” he bellowed, or it would have been a bellow if his voice hadn’t been so whiny. “Spies? Thieves? Assassins?” His voice cracked on each word, making Lucy wince.  
“Dwarves, your Malevolence,” reported one of the smaller goblins. Apparently none of them had noticed that Lucy was a human. She was just short enough, and them just stupid enough, for the mistake to be made.  
“Dwarves?!”  
“We found ‘em on the front porch!”  
“Well, don’t just stand there! Search them! Every crack, every crevice!”  
Lucy tolerated the rough handling of the goblins nearest her with a tight jaw, knowing that they wouldn’t find anything important. They were too stupid to figure out the secret layers of her jerkin, and too rushed to notice the religious icon at her neck, hidden under the folds of her cloak.  
“What are you doing in these parts?” the goblin chieftain demanded as the meager findings of the search were thrown at his feet. “Speak!”  
His command was met with sullen silence. Lucy squeezed her eyes closed for a second, knowing what was coming. Her blood was rushing in her ears. Please, someone lie, someone say a very clever lie. Where was Bilbo? He was good at this kind of thing. She looked around, horrified to find him missing, and then relieved. Even if he was dead, he wouldn’t be here when the Great Goblin grew impatient. Everyone else was present, though, all thirteen dwarves, right down to fierce little Ori. Lucy shut her eyes again. Hail, holy Queen, Mother of mercy, our Lady of perpetual help –  
“Very well,” the king said, straightening. “If they will not talk, we’ll make them squawk!” – to thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve – “Bring out the mangler! Bring out the bone-breaker!” There were vociferous cries of approval from the hordes of goblins on all sides. He wheeled to roll his rheumy eyes over the Company again. “Start with the female!”  
It felt like a physical blow. Lucy went numb, staring, goblin hands shoving and grabbing to latch onto her from all sides.  
“Wait!”  
To Lucy’s everlasting disbelief, it was Thorin, and he stepped forward, startled goblins parting around him. Thank you, thank you, thank you, she chanted, to Mary or maybe no one at all. She didn’t want to feel relief so intense it made her weak to her knees, but she did. Lucy felt a hand fumble for hers, not a goblin hand, a warm one without claws attached, and opened her eyes to see Kili reaching back for her, even with his eyes trained forward. She squeezed his rough fingers gratefully.  
“Well, well, well!” the Great Goblin crowed. “Look who it is! Thorin, son of Thrain, son of Thror! King Under the Mountain.” He swept a mocking bow, and then drew back with a hand to his chest. “Oh! But I'm forgetting you don't have a mountain. And you're not a king, which makes you . . . nobody, really.”  
He stared down at the dwarves for a moment, looking pretty pleased with himself. “I know someone who will pay a pretty price for your head,” he informed Thorin. “Just a head, nothing attached. Perhaps you know of whom I speak. An old enemy of yours . . . a pale orc astride a white warg?”  
“Azog the Defiler was destroyed,” Thorin said tightly. “He was slain in battle long ago!”  
“So you think his defiling days are done, do you?” The Great Goblin chuckled. “Send word to the Pale Orc! Tell him I have found his prize.”  
Lucy felt her stomach coil – no, no orcs, not orcs – but the dread was short-lived, because the Great Goblin then cried, gleefully, “And bring forward the she-dwarf!”  
There was an immediate outcry from the dwarves, which Lucy did not hear over the rushing in her ears, and they all clamored in her direction. Kili was the closest, the most successful, shifting the hand she held to grab her wrist, the other managing to get a firm grip on her jerkin before a goblin hit him in the stomach with the butt of a torch and he had to let go, doubled over with the wind knocked out of him.  
Lucy fought being dragged forward with a mixture of skill and animal panic. It was ineffective against a crowd this size, and she was brought inexorably closer even as the other members of the Company swore and shouted and struggled. Ori, surprisingly, was the second of them to get a grip on her, plastering himself to her side like a bandage, forcing her to scrape him off like mold – “No, Ori, let go! It’ll be alright – let go!” – until she and the goblins finally peeled him off, the young dwarf stumbling back against Dori and Dwalin with tears in his eyes.  
And then there was the Great Goblin, leering down at her. “Well, you aren’t a dwarf at all, are you?” he observed. Lucy didn’t answer, thrashing against the goblins that held her before him, glaring. “It has been quite some time since we tasted human flesh, in my kingdom.” More outcry from the dwarves, which they both ignored, and gleeful cries from the goblins on all sides. Lucy was focusing on inflicting as much damage as possible on those around her. “If I recall correctly, you’ll taste much better if you’ve been properly tenderized.”  
He beckoned, and a goblin to the side of his throne stepped forward, a goblin on the taller, broader side, with a horribly familiar circular something hanging from one hand. Lucy’s whole body rebelled, and she thrashed like an animal caught in a trap, which she was, screaming every filthy word she knew and lashing out with what little she could, with all four limbs held down by goblins – her head, her teeth, her spiked braid.  
“Oh, do you not care for the idea?” the Great Goblin asked, feigning surprise. “Would you rather the little one go first?”  
Lucy’s gorge rose. No, not Ori, not Peter, no. “No,” she said, forcing the word past the sudden blockage in her throat. “Me.” Dori had him, now, was pressing his youngest brother’s face against his chest so he wouldn’t see. Good, don’t watch, don’t need to see this.  
“Beg pardon?” the Great Goblin asked, feigning that he hadn’t heard, goblins on all sides cackling.  
“Me,” Lucy said louder. “Me, do me, not him.” She forced herself to go still, unable to help the tremors that wracked her frame, head down so the horrible things around her couldn’t see her face. She was starting to hyperventilate, black spots already swarming at the edges of her vision; passing out wasn’t far behind – yes, yes, good. But no, she couldn’t, because it was no fun to whip someone who couldn’t feel it, they’d do Ori instead if she passed out.  
She was breathing in sharp, hard bursts through her nose in a bid to stay conscious when the goblins turned her to face the Company. The blank, grim look on her face hit Kili like an arrow in the chest, her eyes black, all pupil, fixed on nothing at all. No, not Lucy, she’s had enough, thinking of the warrior’s dreams and the missing finger and the scar on her neck and her collarbone and he redoubled his efforts to get through the tide of goblins as the one with the whip shoved her cloak forward over her shoulder, off her back.  
The king tutted at the sight of her jerkin. “That won’t do at all,” he noted. “Far too much leather in the way. Cut it off.”  
Lucy shuddered at the tickle of the knife up and along her spine, some goblin cutting through the laces of her jerkin so it flapped loose around her ribs. Her shirt went with it. Hail Mary, full of grace – hail, holy Queen, Mother of mercy, our life –  
The moment of horrible anticipation ended far too soon, and suddenly. Lucy jerked hard against the goblins holding her, both from the transferred force of the blow and in a knee-jerk bid for freedom, but the only sound she made was a grunt. It was a false sign of bravery, a sham – the first blow didn’t hurt for a second, for a second all she felt was numb, and then –  
The dwarves couldn’t hear her over the excited yammering and squealing of the goblins, but they surged forward, screaming and swearing, only to be pushed back. The pain hit like a wave, would have knocked her flat if she wasn’t held up. Mary – our sweetness and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve –  
“Clap! Snap!” the Great Goblin sang, hopping heavily from one massive foot to the other, “The black crack! Grip, grab! Pinch, nab! And down, down to Goblin-town you go, my lads!”  
His minions took up the cry. “Clash, crash! Crush, smash!”  
Second blow. Lucy screamed, she didn’t want to, but it happened. It burned like two lines of fire on her back, starbursts standing out like stab wounds, the hot rush of blood and her pulse pounding in the rough edges of the shredded tissue. It was so much, pain like a force of nature, like an ocean she drowned in. She couldn’t think through it.  
“Hammer and tongs! Knocker and gongs! Pound, pound, far underground! Ho, ho, my lads!”  
Lucy didn’t hear the words, but she felt the tempo of the song in the whip against her back, it was horrible to anticipate and a tiny, miniscule mercy because it wasn’t a shock. The fourth – fifth? – stroke of the whip caught her diagonally, every muscle in her body seizing, a sharp cry forced out of her lungs like water wrung from a rag. – stop god please – Mary, to thee do we send up our sighs – our sighs –  
“Swish, smack! Whip crack! Batter and beat! Yammer and bleat!”  
A goblin, who cared neither for whippings nor singing, stooped to investigate the pile of weapons and personal objects, tossing aside Oin’s crumpled ear-horn in favor of a sleek silver sword, which he unsheathed only a few inches and threw away with a squeal of fear.  
The goblin chieftain, spotting it, stopped singing mid-word and stumbled back into his throne, clambering up it backwards. The goblin with the whip ducked away from it, squealing, and the two smaller goblins that clung to Lucy’s ankles as weights scampered out of sight.  
“I know that sword!” the Great Goblin cried. “It is the Goblin-Cleaver! The Biter!”  
Lucy had long gone limp in the arms of the goblins holding her up, and gasped for air, too grateful for any reprieve to care about its reason, unable to hear what was being said over the pounding in her ears, the rushing, the buzzing. She felt a vague and wordless need to pray, but the words were too scattered, wouldn’t rise to her call, wouldn’t fit together in order, sparking randomly like firecrackers in the darkness behind her eyelids. – hail – please – holy Mother –  
The dwarves took advantage of the upset to surge forward, though they didn’t get far, throwing off the goblins as their chieftain roared for them to destroy the intruders, kill them, cut off Thorin’s head.  
Then there was a rush of wind, a blast of light. Lucy saw it even with her eyes closed, rough wood against her cheek, and she forced an arm under herself, lifted her head to gaze into it through the widest slits her eyelids would allow against such brightness.  
“Take up arms,” intoned the figure that walked forward, arms spread. A male voice. Not the voice of a mother. “And fight. Fight!”  
The dwarves did, scrambling for their weapons, throwing them back to the farther members of the Company, as the Great Goblin screamed for their destruction.  
Kili reached Lucy first. There was no time to be gentle or even careful, not with the goblin swarming over the platform, threatening to crush her underfoot. She was already starting to sit up when he got to her, unfocused eyes and arms wobbling as they shoved against the floor, and he grabbed her arms above the elbows and pulled her up. Pale and sweaty, but standing on her own, and when Gandalf’s voice cut above the clamor of combat, telling them to run, she did. Stumbling and too slow, but running. Kili dragged her forward by one hand, wielding his sword with the other as they raced along bridges that juddered beneath the Company’s feet, that always seemed to be in danger of collapsing beneath them, goblins raining down from above.  
It was Fili at Kili and Lucy’s backs, and he covered them well, until they broke onto a platform with too many goblins, too many enemies. For every goblin they cut down, there were three, four, five more, and as Kili wheeled, trying to keep his gaze on them all, Lucy’s hand came up, jerking forward in an odd, unfamiliar motion, and he glanced over his shoulder to see a goblin go down with a glinting silver star between its eyes. The secret flap of Lucy’s jerkin was swinging open, metal twinkling up at him like real stars. She threw another, covering his back while he gawked, and then an arrow whizzed by and he raised his sword to deflect another, and another, and then they were all running again, and jumping, Mahal damn the jumping, Lucy landed like a thrown rag doll and not like her usual spry self at all. He had to pull her to her feet, shove her to get her running, there was nothing for it. His hands came away from her bloody.  
There was no way of knowing if Gandalf even knew the way out, but they still ran, slashing and hacking to clear the way of the endless, swarming goblins.  
And then there was the Great Goblin, grinning above them, blocking the way. “You thought you could escape me,” he sneered, swinging widely with his gross scepter. “What are you going to do now, wizard?”  
Gandalf jabbed him in the eye. More impressively, he slashed open the creature’s distended stomach. “That’ll do it,” the Great Goblin acknowledged, and his weight cracked the fragile walkway when he fell, so that they all fell, too.  
Kili was shocked to find himself alive when the falling stopped, even if there was a heavy wooden beam across his gut, crushing the air out of him. “Well, that coulda been worse,” Bofur called optimistically.  
He would forevermore be blamed for the Great Goblin’s putrid corpse crashing down on them just a second later.  
Kili wriggled free, ignoring the cries and complaints of his kinsmen, finding Lucy under a loose spill of planks, protected from the crushing blow of the goblin’s landing by a fortunately placed beam. He got his hands under her arms and drew her free of the rubble with ease, his hands hurrying over her head, her neck. Even he knew those were the bones you couldn’t afford to break. Lucy stirred, eyes opening and fixing on his only to shift woozily away. They were glassy. “I think she’s in shock!” he yelled. He’d never seen the condition before, but this fit the descriptions he’d read and heard.  
His cry should have summoned Oin, but Dori had spotted the sea of goblins bearing down on him and the word fell on deaf ears. Kili dragged Lucy to her feet by the straps of her jerkin, pulling her against his chest when she staggered, her head bumping hard against his chin. “There’s too many!” Dwalin shouted. “We cannae fight them!”  
“Only one thing will save us!” Gandalf cried. “Daylight! Come!”

 

Awake, stay awake, awake. Lucy wanted nothing more than to sleep, but awake, awake. She could, she’d done harder things – surely, though it didn’t feel like it, not when she was running full tilt with her back screaming in pain like the unexpected blast of heat from an opened furnace mixed with the ripping drag of a dull knife and the nausea that had gotten the better of her several times by now, but could wring nothing from her empty stomach.  
They slowed, finally, hard to do when running downhill, and she opened her eyes to see the golden light of a sunset – yes thank you praise Mary. “Fili, Kili, Lucy,” Gandalf said, seeing them. “That makes fourteen. Where is Bilbo? Where is our hobbit?” He looked at the breathless, flushed, anxious faces. “Where is our hobbit?”  
Kili ignored his and Thorin’s shouting, pressing the backs of his fingers – softer, not callused – to Lucy’s cheek. She opened her eyes, barely, and then sagged against his shoulder again. Her weight was shockingly light, he realized distractedly – his muscles expected the weight of another dwarf, of course, since he only ever held other dwarves, but Lucy seemed to have about half that mass. It was jarring; she was too important to be so slight, impermanent. Precious things were heavy, gold and silver and gems – except mithril, of course, which was the most precious thing of all, and deceptively light. The thoughts raced through his mind too quick to catch, really, though he’d remember them later and shake his head over the nonsense he’d been thinking at such a moment.  
Fili was at his side, suddenly, Lucy’s pack in one of his hands, axe in the other. He frowned, worried, and glanced over Kili for damage, who in turn shouted, “Hey!”  
It tread on the heels of Bilbo’s little monologue, but it got everyone’s attention where it should have been all along, Kili scowling. “We need to put distance between ourselves and this place so we can make camp,” he reminded the others. “Lucy’s hurt.” It was a vast understatement, but a grim reminder. Those who had been smiling at surviving the goblin caves, or at Bilbo’s speech, promptly stopped.  
And then they heard the first warg’s howl. “Out of the frying pan,” Thorin muttered, his eyes combing the landscape for the animal in question.  
“And into the fire,” Gandalf agreed. “Run. Run!”  
They did, racing down the rapidly-darkening hillside, the warg scouts quickly reaching them, axes and swords flashing in the last of the sunlight. Lucy fell, and the princes dragged her up again by either arm.  
“Up into the trees!” Gandalf shouted from ahead, and Kili glanced forward to see the hillside end abruptly in a cliff. “Climb! Climb!”  
Lucy usually loved to climb trees, and long practice was the only thing that let her climb one now. Muscle memory kicked in. Each grab and lift was an effort instead of a joy, each push of her legs a struggle, her body scaling the well-placed branches haltingly. Fili and Kili both helped her, pushing and pulling, until they were finally so high that they could stop. Lucy slumped forward against the tree’s trunk, the rough bark feeling cool on her clammy forehead. Her back, in comparison, felt hot and sticky from the blood. And it hurt, it hurt, it hurtsithurtsithurts . . . She leaned woozily to one side to retch, but nothing came up.  
“Won’t they just cut down the trees?” Kili hissed to his brother, keeping one hand wrapped around Lucy’s arm in case she slid off the tree branch she straddled. Fili gave him a helpless look as the wargs circled and churned below.  
Lucy’s heart was racing, more from fear than the run or the pain that made her head foggy, though it would have seemed improbable to anyone who knew it. At the first harsh, warped hiss in the Black Tongue, a tremor harder than her ambient shaking shuddered through her. “Do you smell it? The scent of fear?”  
No, no – hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee, blessed art Thou among women and blessed it the fruit of Thy womb JesusHolyMaryMotherofGod – oh it hurts, stop, not orcs, not orcs –  
The wargs were leaping at the trees now, up into the branches, paws finding unlikely purchase. Kili set his sword through the eye of one, the heavy body knocking down one of its brethren as it fell, and glanced at Lucy to check that she was still seated.  
She was, and he had an instant to see the silver glint of a knife in her hand, and then the dark well of blood along her forearm, soaking her shirtsleeve. He lunged to grab the knife, taking it easily as she leaned against the tree trunk again. “Lucy!” he shouted, distracted from the havoc below.  
“It’s alright, it’s good,” she said, and lifted her head. Her eyes were bright, focused. And then her hand moved, another metallic glint, and he twisted to see a star embed itself in a warg’s skull as it lunged for them both.  
There was no time to wonder why she’d cut her arm – the wargs had unseated the roots of the dead trees they occupied, sending them pitching into one another. It was fall or half-jump, half-climb into the next tree, until finally one held.  
The last one. Perched on the very lip of the cliff.  
The orcs were laughing, the rough sound raising every hair on Lucy’s body. She slashed her arm again, grimly, Kili making a grab for the knife but distracted by a small fireball sailing overhead. “Fili!” Gandalf shouted, dropping a fiery pinecone down to the prince. “Dori! Kili!”  
He hurried to catch the projectile dropped to him, bouncing it between his gloved hands like a hot potato as he aimed, sending it into the face of one of the nearer wargs. The fires caught and spread through the underbrush, forming a low, bright barrier on the ground.  
The moment of victory ended when the tree creaked under the weight of them all, pitching suddenly out over the cliff. Kili clutched at the branch that had caught him under the arms, struggling to pull himself up. His brother was in the same situation one branch over, Lucy lashed to her own branch with both arms and legs, eyes closed tight.  
Kili looked for his uncle, shocked to see him upright, striding along the length of the trunk as if it were a sturdy stone road, determination on his face. The king broke into a run, lifting his sword and shield. “No!” he shouted, struggling to climb up onto the trunk. Thorin couldn’t fight Azog alone, it was insane, it was –  
The warg knocked the king clean off his feet, but he was standing, looking unhurt, though it was hard to tell in the confusion of darkness and firelight. He kicked fruitlessly, trying desperately to get his weight up over the branch, to get to his uncle, Dwalin roaring only a few branches from him, the giant’s handhold breaking under his struggles as the white warg locked its jaws around Thorin and lifted him.  
Lucy’s eyes opened at Azog’s rasped order for the dwarf’s head, and she forced her joints to unlock, her muscles to shift under her screaming skin. She drew her weight onto hands and knees, fumbling for a star – and to her shock, Bilbo Baggins raced by her, tiny sword in hand. His battle cry was warbling and uneven, but he struck the orc above Thorin with enough force to send them both flying.  
“Kill him,” Azog hissed.  
No! Not Bilbo. Lucy found a star, one of the few left, and threw – a wild throw, her back screaming, but it lodged in the meat of Azog’s bicep, the Pale Orc turning towards the suspended tree with a snarl as she reached down for Kili, offered an arm that sent blinding, deafening, searing pain through her back and down her spine when he grasped it, drawing himself up, and then he reached down for Dwalin and she turned to help Fili, and they all thundered by her, finally, so that she could lie limp on the tree trunk with the bark cool against her face. She could hear and feel the fire crackling near her feet, could hear the cries and clangs of combat, but the weak second wind of the distracting injury was fading fast, and she was so tired, and –  
And something scraped her off the tree like algae off a rock: strong, hard rails sliding under her, lifting her, and then dropping her again. She landed belly-down on something solid but not hard before the scream could work its way past her throat.  
Lucy struggled to sit up, pushing against the stiff, slick, shifting surface beneath her. Feathers?  
“Lie still,” a voice said, and she jumped. She was sitting astride a gigantic bird, and it was talking. “You are greatly injured.”  
“I hadn’t noticed,” Lucy replied, or she thought she did, because her arms slide out from under her and her face pressed into the ridged feathers with their dusty-oily smell, and everything went beautifully, seamlessly black.  
 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone's curious, Lucy does krav maga, muay thai, and aikido, many moves slightly altered after her arrival in Middle Earth for use against an opponent armed with a long blade.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The stay at Beorn's hall. And the first hints of romance.  
> No music here; too much sad music lately bumming me out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: aftermath of torture, semi-medicinal drug use, gore.

Lucy awoke on the rock, bleary and confused. She didn’t remember being pulled down or sat up, but someone was pressing a waterskin against her mouth, and the moisture triggered thirst. She took a deep pull and immediately choked and gasped at the ripple of agony down her back. “Easy, lass,” Dwalin said. His flinty eyes were concerned. “Small sips.”  
“Bilbo?” she wheezed. “Thor–?”  
“Everyone’s just fine,” he interrupted, pressing the waterskin against her lips once more. “Try again, now, there’s a lass.” His fingertips brushed her chin, coaxing it up to make swallowing easier.  
In between tiny sips, Lucy glanced around, noticing without interest that it was sometime past dawn, they seemed to be seated at the edge of a cliff, and the eagles were flying off into the rising sun.  
Nothing mattered. Everything hurt.  
“Would you like to see the Mountain?” Dwalin asked, though her dull eyes didn’t seem engaged. He directed her gaze towards the northeast nonetheless, hoping for a spark of awareness or appreciation when she saw the single, misty peak far in the distance. There was none.  
“How is she?” Kili asked, striding over and dropping into a crouch before Lucy, who finally showed a glimmer of recognition. “Oin’s with Uncle. You’ve tended wounds on the battlefield, haven’t you?”  
“This is not a battlefield,” Dwalin said staunchly, finagling another slug of water down Lucy’s throat. “I’ve not the skill to lay a finger on the lass. How’s Thorin?”  
“Oin says maybe broken ribs,” Kili replied. “And I’m worried he hit his head – he hugged the hobbit. It’ll be a job hiking down.”  
“Damn foolish birds,” Dwalin muttered. “If ye’ve no concern with heights, yerself, I suppose it’s easy to forget others do.”  
Lucy was stirring, reaching for her pack. Dwalin pushed the thing towards her cautiously, unsure what she could possibly want, but he thought he understood when she began tugging at the buckles holding her medical kit to the pack. They yielded, the kit tumbling out onto the rock, brass latches popping open.  
“Hold on,” Kili said quickly, reaching for the wooden box. “She’s got nasty things in there.”  
“In her medical kit?” Dwalin challenged, mystified.  
“Poisons,” Kili confirmed.  
“Well, if she wants something outa there, it’s not a poison,” the old warrior said.  
Kili shook his head, resolute. “No. They’re all mixed together without labels.”  
Dwalin shook his head. “Why?”  
“She has her reasons,” the prince said defensively. “If she wants something out of here, Oin has to approve it first, I don’t care what you think. We can’t let her accidentally poison herself.”  
The dwarf healer ended up sitting cross-legged across from Lucy, who had either fallen asleep or passed out sitting up, and had to be roused. Kili touched her knee as gently as he could, where he knew there was no injury, but she still jerked awake like she’d been struck, eyes wild and breathing hard and fast. It took a moment for her to calm down and come out of the pain, fingers clenched so tightly together that her knuckles turned white as she stared at the rock before her.  
“Alright, lass,” Oin said when she finally seemed to have recovered, setting the box gingerly between them. “Show me what you want.”  
“She’s not thinking,” Bofur protested. “She’s just hurting and wanted the kit.”  
Kili frowned at him. “Clear out,” he said. “Why’re you watching?” Sheepish, Bofur retreated, moving to stand with the others around Thorin. Kili stared at Bifur and Bilbo until they left, too.  
Lucy stared at the contents of the kit for a few strained moments before gingerly selecting a small cloth sack, hardly the size of her thumb. Oin quickly intercepted it. “What is it?” Kili asked, relieved to see that there was only one such bag, so it couldn’t be confused for a toxic lookalike.  
“I’ve no idea,” Oin said, frowning over the greenish-white powdered contents of the bag and calling, “Gandalf?”  
The wizard joined them immediately, his face lined with worry as he studied Lucy. “Is she growing worse?”  
“No, she wants this,” Oin explained, holding it up for inspection. “What is it?”  
Gandalf sniffed, and his brows shot up. “Sneaky girl,” he said approvingly, handing back the bag. “There’s no word for what this is in Westron or Khuzdul. It comes from very far to the West, and is rare and not well-known.”  
“Well, what is it?” Oin persisted, annoyed. He didn’t like mystery when it came to medicine.  
“A rejuvenator,” Gandalf replied, watching Lucy’s foggy eyes follow the bag. “Traveling alone as she often does, she must tend to her own injuries, no matter her condition, or perish. This will bring her around quite effectively.”  
Oin reluctantly handed over the small bag, with the intent gazes of Dwalin, Kili, and Gandalf all boring into him. Lucy took a moment to accept the bag, another to clumsily withdraw a pinch of powder, and a third to align the tiny mound of green powder on her fingertip with one nostril, inhaling sharply.  
The effect was almost immediate – Lucy’s muscles regained tension, her eyes blinking rapidly and watering. She sneezed, giving her head a slight shake and then groaning at the consequences the action wreaked on her back.  
Kili laughed with relief. “Good show,” he said, gripping her wrist, and she met his eyes, really met them, aware and almost as alert as usual. “Do you think you can walk?”  
“I can because I have to,” Lucy replied, her voice raspy. The grim practicality of the sentiment was almost dwarvish.  
It was still quite an undertaking to get down Carrock, as Gandalf said the rock formation was called. Thorin was a bruised mess, pushing himself too hard, curtly claiming that he was fine, batting away the concerned hands of his nephews and cousins. Lucy stumbled along slowly, made clumsy with pain, fatigue, and blood loss even with her strange, secret drug fizzing through her bloodstream. Someone had to walk in front of her, so that she didn’t go tumbling down the rock face-first every time she tripped, which was often. There were no good places to tend to the Company’s various injuries, not on the sheer, steep path.  
It took most of the day to reach the foot of the great stone outcropping, and a half an hour more to move out from under its shadow, so Oin would have sunlight to work by – what of it there was left, as the sun was slowly but steadily sliding down the curve of the sky.  
They finally stopped beside one of the creeks that fed into the huge valley’s river. Running water, sunshine, plants Gandalf claimed were edible. Lucy dropped onto the soft grass and moss gratefully. She’d taken two more bumps to make it down Carrock. Oh, if her grandfather could see her now. Snorting amphetamine.  
Though he’d probably be proud of what had happened before the drug use. Suffering befitting a saint.  
“Are you alright?” Ori asked nervously, sitting beside her, and flinched. “Sorry, stupid, I mean, you’re not –”  
“I’ll be fine,” Lucy said. Her head was starting to fog and drift again, but it wouldn’t really be safe to take another hit at this point and it was probably best not to be fully conscious when Oin started work on her back. “Did you see?”  
“N-no.” Ori blushed, ashamed, and looked down. “I – I might’ve, but Dori wouldn’t –”  
“Good,” Lucy interrupted. The fiery throbbing on her back was gaining strength, pushing at the air in her lungs. “I didn’t want you to. Never would want you to see that.”  
The young scribe nodded, eyes on his knitted gloves as he fingered the unraveling yarn. “Thank you.”  
“I didn’t do anything.” The conversation was quickly getting away from her. Lucy closed her eyes, watching her pulse beat red on the insides of the eyelids.  
“You didn’t – he said, if not you, me,” Ori reminded her uncomfortably. “And even – even when it was bad, when you –” He broke off again, distressed at the memory and at the idea of dragging Lena through a recap. He read and wrote a dozen languages, had copied medical texts and descriptions of battle and its aftermath, a few odd mentions of interrogation techniques, even, and Ori didn’t think he had the right words to encapsulate the sounds Lucy had been making, not will all due respect and horror.  
“No one worth their skin would have let you lose yours,” Lucy said, and her eyes closed again. “You’re a good boy – dwarrow. Whatever you are.” She sighed, lightly, unwilling to let her ribcage expand or contract too drastically.  
“Thank you,” Ori said again. “I’ll get Oin.” He scrambled to his feet and was gone before Lucy could muster the energy to tell him not to, please, let Oin tend to everyone else first because as long as the healer was otherwise occupied she could kneel in the soft grass with her cloak and shirt plastered to her back with her own blood and feel her heartbeat like the echo of the whip in the existing weals, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it would be once Oin peeled everything away and cleaned the wounds and started stitching –  
She gagged on the idea of it alone. Hail, you Star of Ocean! portal of the sky, ever holy Mother, of the Lord most high . . . Show yourself a mother; offer him our sighs, who for us Incarnate did not you despise . . . Still as on we journey, help our weak endeavor, till with you, our Mother, we rejoice forever . . .  
Lucy carefully shifted onto her hands and knees, and then down onto her front. The grass tickled her cheek and neck. Oin watched the behavior worriedly, from across the quickly-pitched camp, but he couldn’t do anything before Bombur got a fire going and water warming. He needed boiled water to clean the wounds, and warm water to soak her clothes, breaking down the clotted blood that would otherwise be ripped from her wound along with the cloth. In the meantime, he tended to the lesser injuries – bruises, bumped heads, Bofur’s two dislocated fingers, scrapes and cuts, pulled muscles and stepped-on appendages. To most, he suggested only hot or cold water – the creek or a cooking pot, as it were.  
Lucy startled when he touched her shoulder, groaning even as she did. “Steady,” he advised. “It’s only me. What say you we get to work taking off those filthy clothes, hmm?”  
She rolled her forehead against the ground in lieu of shaking it. “No one see,” she mumbled.  
Oin looked up. “Everyone’s a fair sight away,” he said, and they were – perhaps five yards away, the fire crackled, and everyone was clustered around it. It surprised him, really, that no one was sitting with Lucy, but she was closest to the princes and Dwalin, who were all immediately related to Thorin, and concerned about him, and Kili was darting worried glances her way every few minutes. Bilbo had no stomach for blood. Gandalf was staring out over the valley, vigilant against any further danger.  
“No,” Lucy said. She lifted her head a few degrees, squinted, fixing on a gigantic boulder only a few yards away. “Behind that rock. I can walk.”  
“I’d prefer it if you didn’t,” Oin protested, but she was already working her limbs under herself, easing up, and then back onto her heels, breathing in short, hard puffs through her nose, grunting in pain that contorted her expression along with concentration. “I’ll need a spare set of hands,” he pointed out as she slowly rose to her feet.  
“Dwalin,” Lucy broke in, before he could ask. The name was a grunt. Dwalin had seen her cry, already, already knew that she’d tangled with orcs, had surely seen worse injuries and scars than those she bore. “If he says.” Worse injuries, surely, but she didn’t want to call up any memories.  
When Oin relayed Lucy’s request, the old soldier didn’t refuse, of course. He was startled, a little confused, but he stood readily. “I’ll go,” Ori offered, jumping to his feet, but both of his brothers quickly levered him back into his spot between them with a hand each on his shoulders. “Let Oin ask Lucy,” Dori told him patiently, and Ori blushed and nodded.  
She didn’t want him, of course. Lucy was already gingerly stretched out on her front again when Dwalin and Oin came around the screening boulder, and she rejected the suggestion that Ori join them so vehemently they both hoped the lad couldn’t overhear her.  
“He shouldn’t see,” she said forcefully. “No. I don’t want him to see that, he’s only a boy – dwarrow – whatever, he’s too young, no, he didn’t see it happen and he won’t see the aftermath, no.”  
Dwalin returned to the campfire for the pot of warm water, and the pot of cooled-but-boiled water. “She says she’d just as soon not have you see,” he reported gruffly, sparing the young dwarf her intensity.  
“What of someone else?” Kili asked anxiously, his hands knotted together around the talisman his mother had given him. Come Home. Everyone had grown quiet when it became clear Oin was going to look at Lucy’s back, the older ones especially becoming somber and quiet. He expected something bad, blood and screaming, but they were all so grim that it set him and Fili on edge, without knowing why.  
“I’ll not bother her with more pestering,” Dwalin said shortly, hefting both pots of water carefully. “If she wants someone, she’ll ask.”  
Kili bit his tongue, but he didn’t think Lucy would. She was bright and funny and cheerful and engaging, but she was so private, secretive, and he doubted she wanted to inflict the sight of her back on anyone – not that he viewed it that way, but after what Dwalin had reported about Ori, Lucy probably did.  
Bilbo was quietly relieved. Being an older friend to Lucy than most of those present, he’d been afraid, for a moment, that Dwalin would tell him to come back behind the rock – and tending to a wound behind a rock, that was grim and ominous. The whole affair made him unaccountably twitchy, imagining Lucy back there, out of sight, in pain . . .  
Gandalf sighed, pipe between his teeth, as Dwalin disappeared behind the stone. “It may be a long night,” he forewarned, the first poorly-muffled cry rising on the heels of his words. It raised every hair on Kili’s arms, the back of his neck. It felt like a cold raindrop had slid down the back of his neck, and he hunched his shoulders, Fili scooting closer to him on the log they’d claimed as a bench. Ori pressed his face into Nori’s shoulder, cringing. 

 

Lucy could feel herself shaking. Nothing to be done about that. But she did shove more of her second-to-last spare shirt between her teeth, so much cloth in her mouth that it hit her uvula and she gagged. She’d been too loud, and that was just from Oin pouring the warm water over her back, to soak into the wool fibers and scabbed blood. Water. Protein bonds. Fills the kinked spaces, loosens the – no, science wasn’t going to work, she couldn’t visualize molecular structures when she was like this.  
She hadn’t had a shirt or a cloak, the last time, to mat to the wounds. She wondered hysterically if that made it worse – probably better for chances of infection, but worse for the pain of removing the cloth.  
“Ready?” Oin asked after a few silent minutes. Dwalin rubbed at the tattoos over his knuckles, bracing himself. The healer didn’t expect a reply – no one was ever ready – but Lucy nodded against the grass. “I’m going to go slowly, stop me if you must.”  
Pain, screaming, obliterating pain, her whole field of vision washed red. Lucy keened into her shirt, tears stinging in the corners of her eyes, forcing herself to lie in place when her muscles were all jerking desperately in different directions to get away, anywhere but on the grass under Oin’s gentle, careful hands as he slowly, painstakingly lifted the cloak away, the soaked fabric lifting easily, making sticky sounds as it parted ways with her shirt and skin.  
“Very good, lass,” he told her, patting her shoulder where there were no marks from the whip. She still flinched. “Ye did quite well, I’m going to do the jerkin now, hmm?”  
Mary no please god no – the same again, but worse, the red and the ringing in her ears and the spasming and the –  
Dwalin, silent until now, swore under his breath. With the cloak and jerkin out of the way, it was easier to determine the amount of blood. And there was a terrible amount. “Is that normal?” he hissed to Oin, trying not to be overheard by Lucy, who was weeping into her shirt. He put a careful hand on her shoulder, and she turned her head to press her cheek against it, the motion sending a lance through his heart. “Because she’s human?”  
“It’s because she took a tumble down a hill, up a tree, onto an eagle, and down another hill,” Oin replied grimly. “It ripped it all further open.”  
Dwalin had known that sensation, though time dulled the memory of wounds tearing themselves apart, like a rend in cloth, on the battlefield. He suppressed a shudder.  
Oin gingerly peeled back the halves of Lucy’s cut shirt, though his care didn’t seem to spare his patient much suffering. Dwalin swore again, looking away. The healer surveyed the damage grimly, and then cut through the shreds of cloth holding Lucy’s chest binding together. It was half-shredded and soaked, garnet red; he doubted she had any care to try and save the garment.  
It required Dwalin’s help to lift her enough to draw the clothes out from under her, and Oin was glad Lucy had had the foresight and stamina to lay down a blanket first, because otherwise it would have been grass and pebbles against her bare front. It probably couldn’t have made things much worse, but the blanket didn’t hurt.  
The first touch of a wet rag made Lucy gag so hard she choked on her shirt, Dwalin hurriedly yanking it out of her mouth – the shirt serving as a handy rag as she hacked up bile. “Are ye sure ye don’t want anyone else, lass?” he asked worriedly, wiping her mouth. He could hardly stand having his wounds tended himself, when he was younger, without Balin at his side, or the other way around. “Kili offered –”  
Lucy nodded against the blanket, too drained to care, to listen after the question, desperate for any distraction, even an ineffective one.

 

“It’s bad,” Dwalin warned the young prince as they approached the boulder. “I won’t hold with any fuss.”  
“’Course not,” Kili said. He’d meant his offer, had been eager to help, but he also felt like he might vomit. He wouldn’t, of course, but . . .  
When he saw Lucy’s back, he stopped short, Dwalin ignoring him to rejoin Oin.  
Bad was not an applicable word – horrific or incomprehensible fit much better, and Kili had never been very good with words. He’d seen illustrations of whippings, and that’s what he had been expecting – raised, swollen welts, deep, thin cuts. This did not look like that. This looked more like raw meat that had met just briefly with a grinder, which he supposed it was, everyone was raw meat under their skins but oh Aulë –  
“Sit down,” Dwalin barked gruffly, and Lucy lifted her head an inch to see who it was, red and watery eyes peering over her stacked arms. Kili quickly sat in front of her, but that wasn’t right, so he flattened out on his stomach, like she was, to be eye-to-eye.  
“’S you,” she said, sounding like she had a bad sore throat.  
“Who’d you expect?” he quipped, trying to smile.  
“Jussomeone.” The words slurred together.  
“Going to start up again,” Oin warned from behind, and Kili watched a shudder run through Lucy, her teeth digging into her forearm.  
“Don’t do that,” he said quickly, gripping her hand to draw her arm away from her mouth.  
“Helps,” Lucy said shortly, tightly, her eyes screwing shut, and Kili saw the deep parallel cuts in her arm that she’d made in the treetops. They’d need stitching, too.  
He glanced over her shoulder as Dwalin sucked in a breath, seeing a field of raw flesh, and quickly looked at her face again. “What else helps?” he asks. “Not biting or cutting?”  
“. . . praying.”  
“To Mary, right?” he remembered, encouraged by a tight nod in response. “Ah – I don’t know how –”  
“Hail, holy Queen,” Lucy said through her teeth, feeling the rag move in broad stroke across her back, “Mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope. To-to –” Lucy stumbled, not know how to translate ‘thee’, but Kili squeezed her hand tight and she cheated, saying, “To you do we cry, p-poor –” Oin had reached the small of her back, always more sensitive. “We poor . . . exiled children of Eve. To you do we send up our sighs –” Or her cries, Kili thought as a mangled sound wrestled out of her throat. “– M-mourning and weeping in this v-valley of tears. Turn then, most grace – graceful? Graceful Advocate, your eyes of mercy toward us. O clement, O loving, O sweet Mother Mary . . . Pray for us, O Holy Mother, that we may be made worthy.” Lucy let out a shuddering sigh. “Amen.”  
“So be it,” Kili murmured in Khuzdul. It wasn’t his prayer, his goddess, his religion, but he seconded everything Lucy had said wholeheartedly. He looked up at Oin and Dwalin, hopeful that they were nearing the end of their work, but it didn’t look like it – Oin had paused, both to give Lucy respite and to study her back like a painter looking at a damaged canvas. Fretfully. Trying to discern what could be saved. Dwalin was rubbing his bare head, the way he did when his was either distressed or thinking hard.  
Lucy was limp on the blanket, seeming to appreciate the still and quiet, so Kili craned his neck for another glimpse – although he half-felt like he shouldn’t look, shouldn’t intrude on her privacy any more than necessary. He was immediately glad he had. Her back looked much better with all the blood washed off, not half as bad as he had initially thought. He squeezed Lucy’s hand, relieved, and was surprised to feel her free hand tuck itself into his.  
Without the blood, and with the few flaps of loose skin now pressed back into place, he could count the lashes. Eight. It seemed impossible that so much damage had been wrought by fewer than ten blows.  
“Hey,” Oin said softly, to Dwalin. “Look.”  
He gestured along Lucy’s sides, at the small of her back, across her shoulders, where the whip hadn’t fallen. Kili squinted at her shoulders, since they were closest, trying to see what Oin meant. It took him a moment to figure it out – probably, he later reflected, because he didn’t really want to.  
Scars. White against the pink flush of her skin. Old scars. And in a familiar shape and pattern, long, lean, crisscrossing . . . Kili looked down again  
“Mahal’s hammer,” Dwalin murmured, his voice low and quiet but still, somehow, vicious.  
“Orcs,” Lucy said, startling them all. She didn’t lift her head, preferring the darkness behind her arms.  
She offered no other comment on the matter, and Oin resumed his work with a word of warning, poking and prodding the skin back into place. “What –” Kili paused to clear his throat, on the suspicion that it might otherwise have cracked. Oin and Dwalin stared at him. “Why does it – look – like that?”  
It was Lucy, again, who answered, mumbling, “Glass in th’whip.”  
“Or bone,” Oin contributed quietly. “I’m going to start sewing, now, lass.”  
“Another prayer?” Kili suggested, Lucy nodding against the ground. “Alright, ah – hail Mary –” Aulë help him, he couldn’t remember the rest.  
“Full of grace,” Lucy said hoarsely. “The Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our de-e-eath!” The word morphed into a cry as Oin put the needle to her skin, her whole body going stiff as a board. Kili was shocked at the strength in her hands as they convulsed around his – small they were, with slender fingers, but she had a grip that rivaled that of any dwarf he’d ever arm-wrestled. It hurt.  
“It’s alright,” Kili said uselessly, squeezing back (though not as hard). “It’s alright, Luce, keep going.” He pressed his forehead against hers, screwing his eyes shut as she wailed, he could feel her every muscle tense just through his grip on her fingers, her fingernails digging into his hands. “Oin, stop!” he shouted when he didn’t think either of them could last another second.  
To his surprise, the healer obeyed, swiping at the sweat on his brow. “I can’t for long,” he said grimly, accepting a waterskin from Dwalin – Middle Earth’s most unlikely nurse, Kili thought, absurdly. “The light’s beginnin’ to go. We may have to hold her down.”  
Lucy keened at the suggestion, and Kili shuffled on his elbows to crowd closer, knocking his forehead against hers again. “Don’t you have poppy tears?” he demanded of Oin, frustrated, even as he rubbed circles into the backs of Lucy’s hands with his thumbs.  
“Lost with the ponies, like most of my supplies,” he replied regretfully. “I should have carried them in my pockets.”  
Kili bit his tongue to keep in a barbed rebuttal that he would have dearly regretted later, and instead returned his attention to Lucy. “Hail Mary,” he began, prompting, and she started mumbling, this time in her own language, and liberally interspersed with swearwords, if his intuition was correct. Oh Mother of Perpetual Help, grant that I may ever invoke your powerful name, the protection of the living and the salvation of the dying. Purest Mary, let your name henceforth be ever on my lips. He prayed, too, in Khuzdul, hoping that Aulë could be stirred to care about someone other than a dwarf, if that someone was good and brave and strong enough, and Lucy was, he assured Aulë, she was, she was quick and kind and funny and fierce and frightening and clever and lovely and –  
And finally, Oin was setting down the needle for good, not for just another break, swiping again at the new sweat that had beaded on his forehead. “It’s done,” he said, looking at his work regretfully. “I wish I had salve.”  
Lucy did, of course, but she was in no shape to sort safe from deadly – she’d all but melted into the ground, which Kili had thought would be a relief but was really worse than the beginning, when she’d been as stiff as a stone, because it was frightening, but she was breathing.; closer to unconscious than not, blissfully, mumbling a little as Oin carefully stretched light gauze over her back, “to keep off the bugs.”  
Kili shuddered at the thought, finally sitting up, working out the unfamiliar kink his neck had developed when he was lying down. Dwalin passed him a waterskin with a nod of approval. “It can be just as much of an ordeal on this end,” he said gruffly. “I’ll sit here with her, so we don’t have to move the lass. Ye go to Fili.”  
And he wished he wanted to stay, but Lucy was really out now, her face finally relaxed, and he felt like a dwarrow with the classroom wriggles again, multiplied by a thousand. He needed to move, walk, climb, throw a dozen or so rocks. And then he could hug his brother, who was still so indulgent of him, even as adults, that he’d let Kili sleep curled up against his back without giving him grief for it.  
Kili did all of those things, as well as eating a bowl of stew Thorin and Fili practically had to pour down his throat (exchanging worried glances when Kili said he wasn’t really hungry), and was so thoroughly exhausted that he was asleep before anyone else.  
Except for Lucy, of course, who was long asleep under Dwalin’s watch.

 

Dwalin woke Lucy before first light, at Thorin’s order. They couldn’t afford to linger, each of them keenly aware of the orc pack not far behind – or at least, not so far behind that they could afford to sacrifice the head start the eagles had given them. She’d slept like the dead, so much so that at several points throughout the brief night, the old warrior had held a finger under her nose to feel the puff of her breath, even though her wounds weren’t lethal, just to reassure himself. If they became infected, though, they would be.  
Oin wrapped her up before they set out, folding a spare undershirt offered by Ori into a thick pad over the already-thick layer of gauze he’d put down, and then binding it all in place. He hoped it would be enough to prevent further injury, if she fell or was bumped, but he doubted it.  
Lucy was drowsy throughout the process, even when pain lanced up her spine, but she woke up a little as the healer helped her struggle into her shirt. The jerkin was too heavy, and she reluctantly watched Dwalin pack it into her bag for her. “This is Carrock,” she said, staring up at the rock they’d descended from the day before. She felt a breath of relief, but couldn’t let it linger, not when Thorin was unlikely to let them take a few days off traveling. And with her friend’s dislike for more than one or two visitors at a time.  
“That’s what Gandalf says,” Oin agreed, disturbed that she didn’t seem to remember. “Come, let’s go join the others.”  
Everyone looked relieved to see Lucy up and walking, not quite as pale as the day before, and not drugged to achieve that modest accomplishment. Not caring for the attention, Lucy looked down, glad that she had Ori’s chatter to hide behind – making listening noises as he babbled about the plan for the day – Gandalf had told the dwarves that somebody he knew lived quite close by, they could reach his homestead by nightfall if they made good time. Gandalf winked at Lucy when she looked at him, holding a finger to his lips for quiet. She sighed. Wizards.  
“That being said, who will carry Lucy’s pack?” Oin asked briskly.  
“I can carry my own weight,” Lucy protested quickly, spotting the beginnings of a frown on Thorin’s face. He was gazing East with the single-mindedness of the obsessed. “I’ll wear it backwards.”  
“You’ll do no such thing,” Thorin said, surprising her. He turned to frown outright, eyes moving over the Company. “Dwalin,” he decided, and the warrior pulled Lucy’s pack out of her hands before she could do anything about it.  
“We told you he liked you,” Kili said, sidling up alongside her with a smile. Fili was right behind him, though he seemed to be having trouble looking at Lucy. Her heart sank.  
“Actually, you told me he was like this with everyone,” Lucy replied, drawing on the memory of their meeting in Bag End, but speaking was tiring.  
At that moment, they heard the cry of a warg. In the distance, but still chilling. Fili turned to look to the West, but Kili watched Lucy’s face drain of what little color it had regained, her eyes dropping closed.  
“It seems that we will be making very good time,” Thorin said, his eyes combing the mountains in that direction. “Let’s move.”  
The walk across the valley floor, at least, was relatively easy, especially when compared to the mountains they had been scaling only days – two? – before. It felt more like two years than two days.  
But easy as the way was, the pace was difficult – fast, for the steadily-less-distant cries of the wargs, with few breaks. Thorin was as pale as Lucy by lunch, his breathing ragged around the pain of his battered ribs. He accepted assistance from Dwalin and Balin grudgingly, without meeting their eyes. Lucy, too, frequently needed a hand – her unsteady feet slipped on stone, she couldn’t look too far to either side, or ahead, to see what was coming, for fear of hurting her back further, and it was already stinging and burning like she was sitting much too close to a hot fire, deep, throbbing under that, and the raw ache, all of it making her grit her teeth. She hated that she needed the help, which of course made her feel unrightfully annoyed with those who helped her – Fili, Kili, and Ori, the youngsters all together again, with Dwalin stopping every quarter mile or so to glance back with worried eyes.  
Lucy hated it. She wasn’t weak, she was just injured, and it was bad, but she had had worse. She could handle it. She could handle the pain. She could handle herself. And if the dwarves didn’t think so, they’d leave her, and sooner rather than later. She’d be alone, without the hope of what there might be under the mountain.  
Kili watched Lucy’s face draw tighter as the day went on – eyes narrowing, lips pursing, jaw hardening. “Does it hurt?” he asked around noon. “I mean, of course it does, but do you need to stop?”  
She shook her head tightly, knowing they couldn’t stop, and the prince didn’t know what else to do but grab onto her hand – sure that she was going to cast it away from the way her fingers stiffened in his, his shoulders already tensing at the rejection, but then, to his surprise, Lucy relented, returning the grip, her face relaxing just a little.  
If she was going to be alone again soon, she was better off taking what companionship she could before that happened. Even if it came in the form of pity. She gave Kili the sincerest smile she could manage, which was faint, but he seemed happy enough with it. Before a too-close warg cry erased it again.

 

Somehow, the orc pack made it into the valley by midafternoon. “He must have pushed his people very hard,” Gandalf said as they grouped behind a rocky outcropping to strategize. “I’d not be surprised if the wargs they ride have dropped out from underneath them.”  
“Forget about how they got here,” Thorin snapped. “How far are we from this friend of yours?”  
“Hmm. Perhaps half a league? Master Burglar, do go see what you can of the enemy. We need to know how far out they are.”  
Bilbo blanched, but knew there was too little time to argue, scrambling over the rocks and out of sight in a second.  
Lucy gingerly leaned forward against the rock, her mental calculations sluggish. Half a league . . . a mile and a half. She could do that. Just a mile and a half. She used to walk that far to get from her grandparents’ house to her college campus. They’d spent the past months hiking over hill and vale and mountain. She could make it over a mile and a half of lowland easily.  
“Are you alright, Lucy?” Ori asked nervously.  
“Just resting my eyes, kid,” Lucy replied, and realized that while she’d spoken Westron ‘kid’ was an English word. When she opened her eyes, Ori was looking worried. “It’s a pet name,” she said, summoning the energy to slap him on the shoulder, as well as she could without lifting her arm too high. “Don’t worry so much.”  
Bilbo was back, scampering over the rock and down to the grass. “How close is the pack?” Thorin demanded.  
“Too close. A couple of leagues, no more.” Could she make it a half a league across easy terrain faster than an orc pack traveling by warg could cross several leagues? Lucy didn’t think so. “But that is not the worst of it.”  
“Have they picked up our scent?” Bofur asked nervously.  
“No, not yet, but they will soon.”  
“Did they see you? They saw you,” Gandalf said worriedly.  
“No, that’s not it –”  
“What did I tell you? Quiet as a mouse! Excellent burglar material!”  
“Will you just listen!” Bilbo cried over the chatter of approval from the Company. “I’m trying to tell you there’s something else out there!”  
The words had an immediate effect on the dwarves, but Lucy knew that Beorn wouldn’t tolerate any harmful beasts in his valley, which mean that the only beast around was the skinchanger himself. She relaxed just slightly.  
“What form did it take?” Gandalf asked, clearly angling for confirmation of this same conclusion. “Like a bear?”  
“Ye– yes, how did you – but bigger, much bigger!”  
Someone accused Gandalf of knowing about the beast, which of course he did, and then the crazy suggestions flew wild – double back, head for Carrock, split up to hide. “Stop!” Gandalf said. “We will make for the house! I had hoped to approach it calmly, in small numbers, because its owner does not care for visitors, but as it is, he will either help us or he will kill us.” This odd statement was met with silence. Lucy leaned harder against the rock.  
“What choice do we have?” Thorin demanded, and they all cringed at the nearness of the next warg roar.  
“None,” Gandalf said. “Run!”  
And they did. The entire mile and a half. Over flat meadows, down a rocky slope with trees whose branches seemed to reach out suddenly, splashing through a shallow stream where it spread out into a marsh. Lucy couldn’t think by the time she saw the stone wall rise up before them, couldn’t breathe, could only keep her feet under her because that was what had to be done, the single, solitary task left that she would accomplish or die trying. She was the last to the door, which was good because the Company had dogpiled against it and there was so much pain already that even Kili grabbing her hand and dragging her forward sent her to her knees.  
That was it. She’d run. She’d gotten here. There wasn’t energy left for anything else. Gandalf, bringing up the rear of the Company, helped Kili drag her inside as the doors fell open, and then she was inside, on the floor, breathing the familiar smell of honey and animal musk, unaware of the roaring and clamoring at the door.  
“What is that?” Ori demanded after they finally shoved the bear’s snout through the door, slammed the crossbar into place.  
“That is our host,” Gandalf replied, and looked for Lucy. Sprawled in the hay with her eyes closed. Dwalin was crouched beside her, gesturing for Oin. The healer hurried forward with the other youngsters quick on his heels. “His name is Beorn, and he is a skinchanger. Sometimes he is a huge, black bear, and sometime he is a great, strong Man.”  
Kili only half-heard the explanation as he watched Oin flick Lucy’s cheek, rewarded with her eyes opening, unfocused, and promptly closing again.  
“That’s good, then,” he said, relieved. “Help me get her up, lads – Kili, set down a blanket.” He drew up Lucy’s shirt, hissing to see blood blooming through all the bandaging.  
Ori paled. “That’s – that’s quite a lot,” he said, looking around nervously. “Isn’t it?”  
“Go to your brothers now, lad,” Dwalin said patiently, drawing Lucy onto the blanket Kili had spread over the hay that was strewn more or less everywhere. There were huge oxen munching on it, and overlarge ponies, more than a few goats, all not to mention the large, rangy dogs that watched them with bright eyes and lolling tongues. Dwalin eyed the animals suspiciously.  
“What do we do?” Kili asked Oin, keeping his voice low as the other dwarves set to exploring the strange hall. He remained crouched beside Lucy even though Thorin called Fili away, hardly noticing.  
“We see where the stitches are torn, which I don’t doubt they are, and sew them up again,” Oin replied.  
“Aye,” Kili agreed. That seemed sensible. He tucked a loose strand of Lucy’s hair back over her ear. She looked painfully vulnerable, semiconscious and laid out flat, pale, with a scabby scrape on her cheek from the goblin caves. “And then?”  
“And then we’d normally apply clean bandages, but I’m out of them,” the healer said with a frown. “So we’ll put these back and hope for the best.”  
The healer did as he’d said, taking his time with the work, but it still wasn’t long before he was done, and moved away to otherwise occupy himself. Dwalin remained beside Lucy, though, sharpening and otherwise tending to his axes, so Kili didn’t look out of place also sitting beside her.  
He hardly noticed his old instructor, though. Kili was preoccupied with watching Lucy breathe, studying the profile of her face against the wadded clothing the brothers Ri had donated for use as a pillow. He reached down to tuck back the loose strand of hair again, where it had stubbornly slipped forward over her ear, and without consulting his mind, his fingers kept moving, combing through the hair drawn back by the braid which had long gone loose. I’d like to braid it, he thought somewhat idly, and then felt a little shock of surprise. He did want to braid it, but not just a service to someone injured, and not just because Lucy had beautiful hair – Kili wanted to comb out the snarls, braid elaborately, rest his face against her shoulder to feel her breathe. The realization had been hanging over his head since they emerged from the caves – the surge of protective instinct and horror that had arisen when the goblins dragged her forward had been not more than what he would have felt for Fili or Ori or any of his friends, but other. It was other the same as the warmth he’d felt in his gut was, when Lucy had wrapped his cut fingers outside the troll hoard. The attraction had seemed so minimal, just a response to a pleasant touch, that he’d dismissed it at the time. When had it melded into his friendly affection for Lucy? When had the attraction and the friendship become one and other?  
Kili withdrew his fingers from Lucy’s hair, aware of Dwalin watching him critically from the corners of his eyes. His hand was back again, though, in seconds, to smooth her eyebrow, because the fine hairs were ruffled and he couldn’t help it.  
It wasn’t really that surprising, that he was so taken with her, and it wasn’t really any trouble, except that he had no idea if she felt the same. More likely than not, she didn’t. It was rare for the Free People to match or marry outside their own races – the attractions simply didn’t occur very often.  
But it was possible. It was possible that she didn’t care that he was shorter and wider and harder and heavier than a Man, that all of the laughs and jokes and the few precious, private conversations about family and theology and the road ahead meant to her what they had to him.  
Kili ignored Dwalin watching him, and Fili eyeing him suspiciously from across the room, and tucked back that strand of hair again, feeling anxiety and hope swirl headily together.

 

Lucy woke in the morning to something warm and wet on her hand. She opened her eyes, squinting, and saw that a dog was licking her scraped knuckles. The animal met her eyes, tail wagging, and continued its work.  
“That’s very nice of you,” Lucy said softly, aware of the sleeping Company around her, “but that’s a few days old.”  
The animal set to licking her face instead, whining, and Lucy muffled a laugh. It hurt, but it felt good to laugh. Just being in Beorn’s hall had lifted her spirits considerably. So had a decent rest – the sunlight coming through the windows was the pale gold of midmorning.  
Hearing the murmur of quiet voices, Lucy eased onto her hands and knees, something warm and heavy falling from her hip as she did; she glanced back and spotted a hand, followed the arm to the owner and saw Kili. She paused in the work of getting up to study his sleeping face. She’d never have expected him to be the sort to sit with someone injured and hold their hands while work was done on their wounds. It took patience and sensitivity, which she had not known were among the dwarf’s many other admirable traits. Lucy suspected that he played himself down a lot, probably for laughs, which was a pity if she was right.  
Ready to move again, Lucy gingerly eased back to sit on her heels before standing, the dog butting up against her legs for support if she fell.  
The hay of the stable-area of the house was strewn with dwarves. Lucy did a quick count, though surely Gandalf had already done one, relieved to find thirteen dwarves and one hobbit, Gandalf himself standing by the hearth with Beorn, the two conversing quietly. Lucy smiled at the sight of her oldest friend in this world, hurrying across the floor as well as she could, and they noticed her as she neared.  
Beorn grinned, sinking to one knee so Lucy could hug him more easily. He drew away from the embrace, which he had returned carefully, with a frown. “I smell your blood,” he said, looking her over closely.  
“Lucy had an unfortunate encounter with the goblins,” Gandalf explained, his eyes sad. “I had nearly reached that part of our tale.”  
Beorn frowned. “Has someone cared for you?”  
“Of course,” Lucy said, wishing that she could tend to herself, all the time, but of course she couldn’t. If she could, she would never have met Beorn.  
Kili had awoken not long after his hand hit the floor, realizing that he was too awake to fall back asleep. He’d sat up readily, feeling rested anyway, in time to watch Lucy hug the massive skinchanger. He had only vague recollections of the creatures from his lessons, but the others’ mutters of dark magic and the unnatural made him feel vaguely ill-at-ease at the sight. Then again, he’d never known Lucy to be wrong about something, and she clearly liked and trusted the skinchanger. She wasn’t free with her hugs.  
“Ah, Prince Kili,” Gandalf said quietly, using his title for Beorn’s benefit. “Come join us.”  
He did, cautiously. Beorn took in the sight of him skeptically, but made no comment beyond, “Food’s on the table.”  
Kili sat, Gandalf drawing out a chair to join him. Lucy sat more gingerly, Beorn settling beside her with another frown. “Honey,” he said, nudging the oversize clay pot towards her. “Good for healing.”  
Lucy smiled. “I remember,” she said, spooning a generous amount onto her bread. Beorn grunted, watching her chew her first bite, and then stared at Kili instead. The young dwarf ignored the attention, stuffing most of a piece of bread into his cheek. He was hungry.  
Finally, Beorn turned his gaze, once more, to Gandalf. “Continue,” he said, and the wizard did, delineating their descent into Goblin-town via the ‘front porch’. He summarized their encounter with the Great Goblin, blue eyes on Lucy as he spoke, watching for any twitch or cringe. Lucy resolutely ignored his gaze, though she felt it, and focused on methodically biting and chewing pieces of bread. She wasn’t hungry – not a good sign – and the honey felt like glue in her throat, but she needed the calories and Beorn was right that honey was good for healing; it offered nearly the whole B-complex. Not Vitamin C, though . . . Lucy skimmed the tabletop for something that did have that. Important for growing new skin.  
“You are always too quick to demonstrate your bravery,” the skinchanger observed as Lucy scooped liberal amounts of blackberries onto her plate.  
“Ori’s a child, Beorn,” she said, frowning. He grunted, clearly unconcerned with the fates of dwarves of any age.  
While Gandalf recounted the events on the bluff just outside the goblin caves, Lucy focused on eating the berries. They were easier than the bread: light, cool, and slick instead of dense, warm, and sticky. Much easier to stomach.  
Fili joined them at the table as she swallowed the last berry, relieved that she could stop eating. He studied their host with interest, and then abandoned that in favor of studying the table. “Any sausage?” he asked Kili, and earned a glare from Beorn that had him sitting down quickly and avoiding eye contact.  
“Beorn doesn’t eat flesh,” Lucy explained, eyeing the pitcher of milk reluctantly. She didn’t like milk, even usually, but it did have a lot of vitamin D. “Like the elves. Many of his animals are intelligent, and live here as his companions.”  
“What do you mean, intelligent?” Fili asked with a frown.  
“She means intelligent,” Gandalf replied, amused. “Surely you’ve noticed.”  
The princes both glanced at the dog sitting nearest them, which was watching the breakfast conversation with what looked an awful lot like polite interest. Beorn snorted at their surprise.  
“I lost Huckleberry,” Lucy said, remembering, and looked down. “I’m sorry. She could be alright – our ponies bolted, early on, and she was with them. When I head west again I’ll stop to look for her.”  
Beorn nodded, taking the news surprisingly well in stride. He cared greatly for his animals, but Lucy supposed that he also knew how short-lived they were. She still felt bad. Huckleberry was a good animal – not as bright as most of Beorn’s, not so that other people noticed, but Lucy missed her. The pony had made it easier to be without other people, because with Huckleberry Lucy wasn’t completely alone, but now she faced impending solitude without even that comfort. She put her elbows on the table to lean on them, exhausted by the idea.  
“Eat more honey,” Beorn suggested in a grunt, frowning.

 

The rest of the Company awoke one by one, until the table was cramped, but not by any means as chaotic as Lucy remembered the night at Bag End. Probably, of course, because Bilbo was funny to annoy and quite easily overruled, and Beorn was openly scowling even with the dwarves on their best manners, looming intimidatingly overhead.  
Lucy found a mouse to play with so that Kili and Dwalin would stop trying to push food onto her plate. She couldn’t eat if she was playing with a mouse, and the things were everywhere. She harbored a particular fondness for mice; she and Peter had had pet mice, when they were children, when Peter had begged and begged Lucy for a dog for Christmas and there’d been no money for it, so she’d gotten the next best thing within their price range.  
It spoke to the financial conditions of their childhood that two mice had been the next best thing to a dog.  
Bilbo, not to be deterred, kept asking her to please put down the dirty little animal and eat just a little porridge, a few bites of an apple. He fretted and fussed like a mother hen, but Lucy didn’t mind the behavior from him – perhaps because she was used to it, having shown up at his door in virtually all states of distress at some point in their friendship.  
Beorn didn’t seem to care much about their Company, shrugging off introductions, but he had a particular interest in Thorin regarding the matter of the Pale Orc hunting them. Thorin, in turn, was suspicious. “You know of Azog,” he said, frowning. “How?”  
“My people were the first to live in the mountains,” the skinchanger said slowly, gazing into the fire. “Before the Orcs came down from the North. The Defiler killed most of my family. But some he enslaved. Not for work, you understand, but for sport. Caging skin-changers and torturing them seemed to amuse him.”  
Lucy swallowed against her nausea, which had been lurking weakly ever since she ate the bread and honey, but was now swelling. The mouse in her hands regarded her with some concern, paws furled under its chin as it sniffed at her.  
“There are others like you?” Bilbo asked curiously, since he’d never read of them.  
“Once there were many.” Lucy caught sight of the manacle on Beorn’s wrist as he poured milk into Bilbo’s mug. It made her heart hurt to see it. There was a swath of scar tissue underneath it from decades of friction.  
“And now?” Lucy kicked Bilbo under the table, and he turned his round, disbelieving eyes on her.  
“And now there is only one.” Beorn set the pitcher aside, clearly done with the discussion. “You need to reach to reach the Mountain before the last days of autumn?”  
“Before Durin’s Day falls, yes,” Gandalf confirmed.  
“You’re running out of time,” Beorn observed, looking over the group.  
“Which is why we must go through Mirkwood,” Gandalf said, not pleased with the idea.  
Beorn frowned. “A darkness lies upon that forest. Fell things creep beneath those trees. There is an alliance between the Orcs of Moria and a Necromancer in Dol Guldur. I would not venture there, except in great need.”  
“We will take the Elven road,” Gandalf assured him. “That path is still safe.”  
“Safe?” Beorn’s reply could almost be called a scoff, if he wasn’t too dignified for the word to apply. “The Wood Elves of Mirkwood are not like their kin. They're less wise, and more dangerous. But it matters not.”  
Thorin’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?”  
“These lands are crawling with Orcs. Their numbers are growing. You are on foot, and at least one among you is injured. I smell his blood.” Thorin received this news much less graciously than Lucy had, stiffening noticeably. Beorn glanced over him, continuing, “You will never reach the forest alive.”  
Half the dwarves bristled at this, and half wilted slightly. Lucy watched the mouse crawl over her knuckles, stopping to sniff at her scabs. Bilbo frowned, noticing it.  
Beorn stood, the floorboards creaking. Lucy glanced over her shoulder as well as she could to watch him move across the room. “I don't like Dwarves,” he said slowly. “They're greedy.” His glance fell on the table as Gloin brushed a mouse from his wrist with less care than was due such a fragile creature. “And blind,” he added, picking up the moue. “Blind to the lives of those they deem lesser than their own.”  
The skinchanger contemplated the mouse for a moment. “But Orcs I hate more,” he rumbled finally, looking up. “You may stay here to recover, and then I will give you what you need to make it to Mirkwood.”  
Thorin visibly relaxed, his fellows following suit. Kili frowned, watching Lucy make a bridge of her fingers for the mouse in her hands. Noticing, she gave him a thin smile. Despite the night’s rest, there were still dark smudges under her eyes, but her cheeks looked pinker.  
She’ll be ready for the road in a few days, he assured himself. She’s strong. 

 

Thorin did not want to stay a few days. The conversation had been put off until evening, the Company spending the sunny day wandering the land within the protective stone walls of Beorn’s homestead. Huge bees buzzed through the orchards, drunk on fermented fruit, too happy to sting, and massive horses roamed the meadows just beyond the walls, never straying so far they could not run through the gate to safety if they scented orcs or wargs on the wind.  
It was a fascinating place. Ori had been sketching almost constantly since he awoke. Lucy had spent most of the day inside, occasionally moved to stand in the sun for a few minutes, but always wanting to sit down again soon after. Lying down was even better. Kili sat with her several times throughout the day, telling stories of the pranks he and Fili used to play at home in Ered Luin to make her smile. Sometimes she even laughed, though whether or not that was worth the swift pain her back paid in retribution, Kili couldn’t say.  
And now it was evening. Beorn had left with strict instructions that they were not to leave the house after nightfall for any reason whatsoever. Lucy was dozing in the giant’s bed. And the dwarves and Bilbo sat around the table with the remains of dinner, Gandalf puffing his pipe on the stool by the fire.  
“We have to stay,” Nori protested. “Lucy can’t walk, let alone ride.”  
Thorin’s face was grim. “I know.”  
There was a moment of shocked silence, and then Ori jumped up with enough force to send his chair to the floor, oversized though it was. “No!” he shouted. “I won’t leave her, I don’t care!”  
Dori dragged him down to sit as Nori righted the chair under him. “Remember who you speak to,” Nori scolded.  
“I don’t care.” Ori was flushed dark red. “I don’t.”  
Kili realized that his hands were fisted in his lap only when Fili squeezed his wrist. He forced them to relax. “We can’t leave her,” he said, forcing calm into his voice. “She’s a member of the Company. She’s done nothing wrong.”  
“There is a clause in the contract that states a member may be left behind if they are injured, but only if they are left in a safe place with someone to provide them due care,” Balin said unhappily.  
“The skinchanger is obviously fond of the lass,” Oin said uncomfortably. “It may be safer for her here than with us.”  
“We’re not discussing this,” Kili insisted, his voice gaining an edge. They couldn’t. “She saved Ori’s life! Do you think he could’ve taken a hiding like that?!” Dwarves were tougher than Humans, generally, but Ori was so young, slender for a Dwarf, and unused to either pain or terror.  
Ori was still defiant, jaw clenched and chin raised, but Nori and Dori looked pained.  
“How many of you could have shaken yours heads after that fifth lash?” Kili challenged, feeling his face heat. His hands were tightening again, the leather laces of his archer’s gloves creaking. “When he asked her if she’d had enough?!”  
“Be still,” Thorin warned. Kili had been nearly shouting. “You’ll wake her.”  
Kili subsided, gritting his teeth. Fili gripped his wrist again, though he couldn’t be sure if it was restraint or comfort. Probably both.  
“I don’t know how lucid she was at that point,” Oin said tentatively. “I don’t think she heard the Great Goblin ask.”  
“It doesn’t matter,” Ori said firmly. “She said no the first time.”  
“Before the lash touched her back,” Gloin pointed out, shifting uncomfortably in his chair.  
“You think she didn’t know?” Kili snapped, his temper growing shorter by the minute. “She’d been through it before, you idiot!”  
He bit his tongue, but Dwalin was already glaring at him across the table, Oin casting his gaze heavenward.  
The silence around the table was strained. It was suddenly clear why Lucy had always bathed away from the others, though she claimed no Human excess of modesty.  
“Her bravery is not what is under question here,” Thorin said finally, his voice level and controlled. “Do you think I am so petty that I cannot see it? She was brave, and she protected our youngest – yes, perhaps even saved his life, but our dilemma is that we must reach the Lonely Mountain by the last light of Durin’s Day, or wait another year at least for the opportunity to arise again. She cannot travel, not without slowing our progress and risking her own life, and we cannot spare the time it would take for her to heal.”  
Kili scowled at the tabletop, but under the anger, he knew his uncle was right. The world was unjust. Things were rarely fair.  
“I’ll wait,” Ori said into the silence. “I’ll wait right here. All year.” And he crossed his arms, sitting back.  
Nori and Dori glanced at one another around him, weighing their loyalty to someone who had protected their brother against their desire to see Erebor. “We’ll wait, too,” Dori said after a weighty moment. The words pained him.  
Dwalin wanted to speak, but couldn’t. He cared for Lucy, but his loyalty to his cousin was greater. So was Balin’s.  
“I’ll wait,” Kili said. Thorin glared at him, and he glared back.  
“I would,” Bilbo said anxiously, glancing around for recrimination.  
“You have wounds of your own,” Oin pointed out to Thorin, gently, and the king redirected his glare to fall on the healer.  
Thorin opened his mouth, eyes stony, and then relented. He sighed. “Three days,” he conceded. “We will wait three days. By the end of that time, I will be fit to travel. If Lucy is not, we leave her behind.”  
There was no way Lucy would be ready to travel by then, but there could be further negotiations later, when Thorin was not already annoyed at his own compromise.  
The great doors creaked open suddenly, Beorn striding inside and quickly barring the door against whatever threats lurked in the night. He surveyed the Company for a moment, and then spoke. “Where is Lucy?”  
“Still resting,” Gandalf said. He had been uncharacteristically quiet during the discussion.  
Beorn nodded. The dwarves began to leave the table in favor of their bedrolls, murmuring. Kili sat stiffly as Thorin walked past him. Fili sighed. “I told you not to,” he reminded Kili, who came out of his angry reverie in surprise.  
He was saved having to reply by Lucy. She wandered into the main room bleary-eyed, arms wrapped around her middle like she was cold. “Lucy,” Gandalf greeted warmly. “You’ve awoken just as we turn in. Did you need something?”  
“No,” she said, her eyes roving the room. They stuck on Kili so briefly he wasn’t sure he’d noticed something real or just imagined it. “I wasn’t really sleeping. Did Thorin say what the plan is?”  
There was an uneasy silence as those still seated at the table – Kili, Bofur, Nori, Bifur, Bilbo, Dwalin, and Balin – glanced at each other.  
“He’s decided that we will rest here three days,” Gandalf said, and Lucy nodded, her eyes distant.  
“I can ride in three days,” she said decisively, and Kili cringed at the phantom pain that laced over his own back.  
“We’ll see,” Gandalf said, offering a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.  
Beorn, silent until now, plucked something off a high shelf by the hearth. “Here,” he said, handing it to Lucy.  
She looked down at the huge jar, surprised. “What is it?”  
“Powerful salve,” he said, glancing away. “Made in Rivendell. For your back.”  
Lucy unscrewed the ceramic lid and sniffed, and the smell was immediately and powerfully familiar. Her eyes watered, not because the scent was stringent, but because the dark days after the orcs were usually not so fresh in her mind, and the half-forgotten scent of this particular ointment brought the memory back powerfully. “Thank you,” she said, blinking, knowing the stray tears would be blamed on the medicinal smell many salves boasted.  
Beorn walked to the door and let himself back outside without a word, the waking members of the Company watching him go in silent confusion.  
Knowing full well she couldn’t apply the stuff herself, Lucy looked around for Oin. Her eyes found him, in a corner of the room with his brother, just as he let out a ripping snore. Gandalf was gazing deeply into the fire, probably having wizardly thoughts of great importance. Bilbo was too squeamish to be of any use, and yawning prolifically besides.  
And she didn’t like the idea of asking someone she wasn’t close to for help, which left Kili and Dwalin. The warrior was the obvious choice, used to carnage. Kili . . . she didn’t want him seeing her back. Not again. Bad enough he’d seen it once.  
“Dwalin?” she said, holding up the jar. “I hate to ask, but would you mind helping me?”  
“Not at all, lass,” he said, though he was obviously surprised. “In the other room?”  
Lucy nodded. “Goodnight,” she told the rest of the room, and there were nods and mumbled platitudes.  
“Should we tell her?” Nori fretted as soon as she was gone. He spoke softly, since she’d left the door open a crack, and he could hear the low rumble of Dwalin’s voice.  
“No,” Bilbo opined, rubbing his neck. “She has enough to worry about.”  
“She’s clever,” Gandalf reminded them all. “Don’t think she hasn’t thought through what will likely happen.” He’d also sensed her pressed against the wall just around the corner from the hearth and the table, listening hard to the discussion. He could only imagine what effect it had had on her. Hopefully, the five who had thrown their lot in with hers would outweigh the nine who hadn’t. Ten, if he included himself.

 

Dwalin looked around the new room suspiciously, but it seemed like a perfectly ordinary bedroom, if oversize and spare. No mirror. No sewn or stitched things on the walls. No paintings or sketches. Not even a chest-of-drawers. Just the bed and a small table with an oil lamp. A shelf by the door held another lamp and, surprisingly, a few books. The pages, when he looked closer, showed themselves to be made of leather, and the script on the bindings looked crude and unfamiliar. He stepped away from them with a hidden shudder.  
Lucy had taken advantage of his distraction to wrestle out of her shirt by herself. Injured, not helpless. And if she could make it through life without the experience of being even partially undressed by Dwalin, she’d be glad. Her feelings towards him ranged too much towards filial for that.  
Dwalin felt even more ham-handed than usual as he wrestled the lid off the jar. Holding bandages and water for Oin was one thing; doing any actual tending himself was another matter. He’d only ever cared for the wounded at Azanulbizar, blindly, without training, and only because the healers had been so overtaxed. Only the care of those already irretrievably near to death had fallen to him. And granted, all Lucy required now was an extra pair of hands, no skill required, but he was amazed that she entrusted the bruised, shredded skin of her back to his rough killer’s hands. Dwarves who didn’t know him shied away from him. Dwarves who did know him still cringed at any hint of anger in his voice. Humans were little different, though most had an added layer of distrust born from being of a different race.  
And yet Lucy was sitting on the edge of the bed, already unwinding her bandages, back turned to him in a display of trust, intended or not.  
“There are more bandages in my kit,” she said, glancing towards her pack where it was slumped against the wall.  
Dwalin carefully peeled back the edges of the bandage, relieved when it came away easily. Lucy still went rigid, and he squeezed her shoulder with the hand not prizing the gauze free of the spot where it finally stuck, gummed to her back with blood. It had been harder to remove yesterday, when Oin had taken it off to replace the torn stitches, but Lucy hadn’t bled much since it was replaced. It only stuck in two more places before falling free.  
The warrior let the gauze drop, glad it wouldn’t be reused again, giving the inside a cursory glance. Lucy reached back blindly, finding the gauze and dragging it forward, studying it critically.  
“What’re ye lookin’ for there?” Dwalin asked, turning his critical eye to her back. The nastiest parts were the deep cuts where the stitches had been ripped out and sewn again. They looked like angry black teeth in her flesh.  
“Infection,” Lucy said, touching a pale yellow stain in the cloth and sniffing it. Faint smell, but not a good one: pus. The rest was more of the same, or blood. Pus alone wasn’t necessarily bad, though. “Are the swollen parts hot to the touch? Pink or red?”  
Her entire back was pink and red, except where it was mottled blue and purple and nearly black. Dwalin touched the edges of the deep cuts as gently as he could, feeling Lucy jerk in pain anyway. The skin was hot, sure enough, burning like a fever, edged in red that looked angry. “Aye, to both.”  
Lucy tried to keep her tone light. She was only moderately successful. “Best hurry with the salve, then.”  
Dwalin agreed. Infection or not, anything that could help was sorely needed. Especially if Thorin insisted on leaving when he intended to, which Dwalin knew he must. They could not sacrifice their Quest for any one of them, except perhaps Thorin himself.  
The trouble was, applying the salve involved more touching. He stared, stymied, for several moments.  
“You remind me of my grandfather,” Lucy said. Dwalin, son of Fundin, veteran of Erebor and Azanulbizar, did not jump at the sound of her voice.  
She twisted her neck, carefully, carefully, to look over her shoulder at him. “Really, just your hands do. He worked his whole life. On his father’s farm, when he was young, and then he got work as a docksman when they lost the land. He had big hands. Rough, from work. Callused so thick, he could pull a pan of the fire without a mitt. But when my brother or I fell and hurt ourselves, as children, he was the one we went to with our tears and our scraped knees. Not my grandmother.”  
Lucy turned around again, and she did her best not to twitch or jerk or whimper or shudder or gasp as Dwalin carefully worked the salve into her skin. He was gentler than he gave himself credit for, though. It didn’t hurt more than could be helped, and the cream itself had a numbing agent that quickly made the wounds far more bearable. She wiped at the tears that rolled from the corners of her eyes despite her best efforts.  
Dwalin gently pressed new gauze into place, wrapped in down with the now-bloodstained shirt in place for padding, and helped Lucy ease her shirt back over her head before she mustered the will necessary to ask, “How’s Kili?”  
“Jus’ fine, I suppose,” he said, frowning. “How do you mean?”  
“He’s not – being weird?” Lucy looked down, rubbing the scar on her left hand. “After – seeing?”  
“Taking care of someone other than Fili for once will do him good, in the end,” Dwalin said firmly. “And he’s always been a touch odd, so I can’t say I noticed any difference yet.”  
Lucy smiled. Her grandmother used to call her “a bit strange” all the time. “Thanks,” she said. “Goodnight.”  
Dwalin nodded, pausing as he left the room to look over at Kili, still seated at the table. He and Bilbo seemed to be talking – about what, he couldn’t imagine. Odd. Shaking his head, Dwalin sought out his bedroll.

 

The next day was beautifully sunny, in direct contrast to the danger they all knew was lurking just out of sight. Lucy woke late, despite dozing most of the previous day, and was surprised, as she did her careful shift to hands and knees, that her back didn’t hurt nearly as much as she expected. Still hurt, but at no point in the process of getting up did she have to pause to grit her teeth and breathe while red swamped her vision.  
Whatever was in that salve, it worked. Either that or she’d gone some blissful kind of insane.  
Kili was the only one in the house when she came out of the bedroom, looking up with a bright smile. He was fletching new arrows, an activity usually relegated to the evenings, when it was too dark to keep walking but not late enough for sleep. “Good morning,” he greeted.  
Lucy eyed the pile of arrows at his side. Judging by its size, he’d been awake for quite some time, and sitting in one place for most of that time. Kili wasn’t prone to sitting in one place, so that meant he was probably waiting for something, and the desertion of the hall indicated that the something was probably her. Unexpected warmth bloomed in her stomach.  
“Good morning,” she returned without pause, approaching the table. She was hungry, too, another good sign, and probably a result of the fever-banishing tea Beorn had constantly refilled her mug with the day before. Glad that he was out, so she didn’t have to choke down honey, Lucy dragged the blackberries towards herself, dumping half into a bowl that looked unused and pouring cream over them.  
Kili worked in silence while she ate, taking the cue from her quiet. Lucy watched him, his fingers surprisingly deft as he cut feathers, lay down glue, placed the feathers. It took much more intelligence and training to fletch arrows than most people guessed; one couldn’t slap down glue and feathers willy-nilly. Lucy watched him eye a section of feather critically, trying to decide if it was a good match for the others already adhered to the shaft in his other hand.  
“I feel better today,” she volunteered when he put the feather aside and began shifting through the pile for a better fit.  
“Really?” Kili abandoned the search immediately, watching Lucy pop a berry into her mouth. “That’s good.”  
Lucy nodded. She watched him return to the feather pile. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of another dwarf archer,” she remarked, surprised at the realization, although it made immediate sense. Dwarves had short arms, compared to elves and humans. They favored heavy axes and greatswords, where their superior strength gave them an advantage.  
The prince grinned as he selected another feather. “No, I don’t think you would have,” he agreed, holding it against the feathers already glued to the new arrow for comparison. “It’s not considered respectable. I mostly took it up to piss Thorin off.”  
“Why would you want to piss off your uncle?” Lucy asked, already starting to smile in anticipation of a good answer.  
“Well, let’s see,” Kili mused, trying to keep his attention on his task even though he was, as usual, eager to make anyone smile, and especially Lucy. (He should’ve noticed that much sooner, but he didn’t know her as well as the others, and it had seemed like a fun challenge, at first, to find her funny bone.) “I was – thirty-two, so Fili was thirty-seven . . . He’d said something off, I don’t remember what, at some meeting of the Seven Lords, more stupid than rude. Thorin was terribly angry with him.” He smirked at the memory. Fili always looked so scared when Thorin was angry, which was funny when Kili could conveniently forget how easily Thorin could put the fear of Mahal into him, too.  
Lucy’s brows knit together in confusion. “So you made Thorin angry, too?”  
“Got him off Fili’s arse,” Kili said cheerfully, dabbing glue onto the shaft of the arrow in a precise line. “He forgot all about the Seven Lords incident.”  
Lucy knew, of course, that siblings drew fire for each other as often as they blamed the other for their own exploits, but she had always been the one to take the dive for Peter. He was younger. And a softer kind of soul, not a mean bone in his body. As a child, he’d been likely to burst into genuine tears of regret if confronted with his wrongdoing, where Lucy was likely to get angry right back at the adult doing the confronting. Fili was older than Kili, so it surprised her that the Seven-Lords-archery-episode hadn’t happened the other way around, but maybe with the two so close in age they tapped in and out of the hot seat.  
“Didn’t you do that for your brother?” Kili asked, glancing up and seeing her thoughtful expression.  
“Of course,” she said. “But Peter’s younger. I always took care of him.” She fed him, bathed him, found the money for new clothes when he outgrew the old (or stole them, sometimes), hid the bad things from him that she could, reminded him to keep a stiff upper lip when he seemed a little too sensitive to survive the world, dispensed advice and comforting hugs and bracing claps on the back.  
Kili nodded, the information in keeping with his understanding of Lucy, always counting heads, checking on Ori. “Right. Peter’s younger, so he’s more . . . important.” Lucy nodded, though she’d never termed it that way, herself. Precious, yes, or vulnerable, but not explicitly more important.  
“But Fee is Uncle’s heir,” Kili continued, holding the feather in place against the track of glue. “Between the pair of us, he’s more important. It matters if he gets in trouble for some stupid prank, or if he got bad marks from our tutors when we were kids, if he’s good with an axe and a sword and a hammer, handy in the forge. It matters if he looks put-together, if people think highly of him, if people think he’s nigh on perfect.  
“But I’m just me.” He shrugged slightly. “It doesn’t matter if I’m a fool or look a mess, if I can’t speak Old Khuzdul to order ale, or if Uncle’s always angry with me.”  
Lucy stared at him over the table, her last few blackberries forgotten in the bowl. That is quite possibly one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard. And I’ve seen some shit. She didn’t need to ask to know that Kili always took the heat, not after that monologue. He did, looking stupid and foolish and reckless – Balin had told her on the night they all met that Kili was as like as not to kill himself as not on some mad lark. And Fili came out of everything clean as a whistle.  
She’d seen it herself, every other morning in the Company’s camp – Kili unbraiding, brushing, and rebraiding Fili’s hair, and laughing off Fili’s rare attempt to reciprocate because he claimed the older prince couldn’t braid for shit, and it was true. With the way things were, Fili had probably never had a call to develop the skill.  
Saddened, Lucy stood up. “Where are you going?” Kili asked, frowning.  
“To find Oin or Dwalin,” she said. “Salve.”  
“I could do that,” Kili offered, realizing as he spoke that it was one thing to stay inside to wait for Lucy, to see if she was any better, and a whole other thing to offer to rub something all over her naked back, even though – attraction or not – he hadn’t meant it that way. It was a struggle to keep his cringe off his face.  
Sure enough, Lucy gave him a considering look before sitting down again. He didn’t know that she was calculating the weight of his offer against the weight of social obligation, against the possibility of pity or disgust. “Alright,” she said after a moment, largely because she was getting pretty tired of only old folks seeing her bare. “Wash your hands while I get all these damn bandages off?”  
Lucy drew up her shirt in the back, drawing it up over her shoulders and then popping it over her head, leaving her arms in the sleeves and her front covered in the bunched fabric. She was more practiced at that motion than was right, considering the very specific call for such a skill.  
Kili turned around from the wash basin, wiping his hands on the towel, to lay eyes on a very different set of lashes than had been there two days before. The bruising was mottled yellow at the edges; scabs encrusted the stitches like clusters of unlikely garnets, instead of onyx. “It’s so much better,” he said, shocked, and Lucy turned her neck as far as she could before it hurt, unable to see anything, but that was farther than she’d been able to turn her neck last night. “What’s in that salve?”  
“I wish I knew,” Lucy said, carefully working an arm around her side to probe the areas of her back that put in reach. Kili sat down on the bench behind her, still marveling. The swelling was down. “Does it feel hot?”  
He pressed his fingertips lightly the skin beside the deepest rend, which Oin had stitched over twice in a bid to keep it closed. Her skin was warm and surprisingly soft. Between the new damage and the old scarring, he’d expected rough, but the scars were just a little stiffer and slicker than the rest. “Not hot, really. Just . . . warm.” He could feel the muscles shifting under her skin as she breathed, strong and sure.  
And there was an ill-timed curl of heat in his gut. He withdrew his hand, glad Lucy couldn’t see his face because he didn’t know what it looked like. Ashamed, probably – to feel that, now.  
“Well, let’s get the salve and bandages back on before anyone wanders in here,” Lucy said, sighing. It always felt better to have her back open to the air, breathing, than hot and sticky and stifled under wrappings, but it had to be done.  
And unlike last time, she wouldn’t have the time or opportunity to wander around completely shirtless when bandages finally became unnecessary – yet another part of her life her grandparents would have been so thrilled to witness, but skinchangers didn’t share the other free peoples’ views of nudity (possibly because they ripped out of whatever clothes they were in when they changed shape, and had fur after the fact), and Beorn had already seen her naked from tending her various wounds by the time she abandoned clothing entirely.  
Still a funny story to imagine telling her grandparents – living with a man who was also a bear, wandering around his property naked except for underwear while wounds inflicted by nightmare monsters closed up. Her brief stint as a nudist.  
“Am I hurting you?” Kili frowned, trying to spread the salve more lightly as her back jumped a little under his hands.  
“No – well, yes, but I’m trying not to laugh.” Lucy grinned. “I’m wondering what my grandparents would think if I told them about all the people who’ve seen me shirtless at this point.”  
Kili laughed aloud, surprised. “That many?”  
“Well, you,” Lucy said, ticking the names off her fingers, “The goblins, orcs, Oin, Dwalin, Beorn –”  
“Beorn?”  
Lucy did laugh, grimacing as the motion bumped her back against Kili’s hand, a bolt shooting up her spine, heat splitting over the skin of her back like embers flaring into fire. Still bad. Don’t get cocky. “I was hurt! Same goes for Bilbo.”  
Kili had to draw away, laughing too hard to risk touching her. Lucy turned as much as she was able to see, grinning. “B-Bilbo –” he gasped, trying not to grab his sides with salve all over his fingers. “Bagg-in-ins!”  
“I’d been stabbed,” Lucy said, but she was trying not to laugh, too. Kili’s laugh was infectious – he often started chuckling at some memory or another on the road, and Lucy was usually giggling along before she’d asked why. “I couldn’t reach – it was my back, alright?”  
Kili sobered, somewhat, his grin lingering even as he found the correlating scar, on the left of her spine, between her two lowest ribs. Lucy shivered at the unexpected touch – it didn’t hurt. It was one of the few undamaged patches of skin back there, and the light exploration felt . . . good. People rarely touched her unless it was to inflict or repair damage. She supposed that was one reason she liked the dwarves of the Company so much – always jostling her shoulder with theirs, slapping her on the back, gripping her forearm.  
This felt different, though. She stifled a sigh. How long had it been since she’d had an orgasm? . . . seven, no, eight months. Well, fuck, that’s just sad, no wonder this feels good.  
Frowning, Kili smoothed his thumb over the scar, as if that could erase it, hardly aware that his other hand had fallen to rest on Lucy’s right hip. She was very aware of it, though, and made a mental note to find a willing and not-despicable partner for some kind of tumble sometime soon. “Did someone try to kill you?”  
“I asked a few too many questions,” Lucy sighed, pushing aside her preoccupation. “And turned to go at an inopportune moment. Stupid of me on both counts.”  
“Still,” Kili protested. What questions could she possibly have been asking? And of whom?  
“People are always trying to kill me,” Lucy said, amused, turning her head to glance back at him. “How do you think I got the way I am?”  
Alone, scarred, strong, tough. Kili shook his head. “No way to live,” he remarked quietly. Life was, in his humble opinion, meant to be one great, incredible lark. Too much pain or struggle was a perversion of that, and therefore tragic.  
“Wouldn’t had I the choice,” Lucy replied, and faced forward again. Kili quickly laid down gauze, adding the folded shirt for padding, passing the long linen strip, rolled into a cylinder, back and forth with Lucy as they wound it around and around her torso, until everything was safely, snugly bound in place, her shirt drawn back down to cover any sign that something was wrong.  
Except for the bloody salve on his fingers, the sight of which made him recall the troll hoard, Lucy binding his fingers after he foolishly severed the tips. He rubbed the flat scars together thoughtfully, the blood turning the salve pink. He wiped off his hands, watching Lucy screw the lid back on the salve jar and getting the gauze and linen organized for later ease of use.  
She was trying not to touch her hip. It felt like she would see the faint impressions of fingertips in her skin, if she lifted her shirt to check, which she staunchly refused to do even after Kili had excused himself to find his brother.  
You like being the one taken care of, rare as it is, Lucy reasoned. Don’t be pathetic about it, though. And for Mary’s sake, don’t start mooning over anyone just because it’s been a while.

 

Beorn’s hall didn’t offer much for distraction, but the walled lands around it did. Their host was gone for hours at a time, the entire day, even, leaving them to their own devices. Ori sketched everything, usually doing so from a seat between his dozing brothers; Nori and Dori differed in virtually every other way, but shared a deep love of a good nap. Kili climbed the fruit trees, throwing his findings down to his brother – who, like all respectable Dwarves, much preferred to keep his feet firmly on the ground, braced against reliable stone or soil instead of flimsy, capricious wood. Dwalin practiced with his axes, though he could work through the old battle patterns in his sleep by that point in his life. Balin sat smoking with Oin, Gloin, Gandalf, and Bilbo. Bofur and Bifur carved toys from the plentiful deadfall under the orchard’s branches, while Bombur tried to think of decent foods he could make without any meat or eggs to work with. And Thorin gazed East.  
Lucy sat in the sun with whoever was closest to the hall, reading Beorn’s strange books. The dwarves, to a one, disliked the things on sight, and there were murmurs that the runes seemed to be written in blood (which they were, of course).  
“I just don’t understand it,” Dori remarked as they all sat together in the sunny grass the third and final day, eating a picnic lunch. Because apparently the novelty of eating outdoors has been lost to none of us yet, Lucy observed dryly. “How it works.”  
“And that makes it bad, of course,” Nori quipped, but he was just being contrary. Well-traveled though the reformed criminal was, he liked their gruff, distant host no better than the rest.  
“Unnatural,” Bombur grunted.  
The book on Lucy’s lap slammed shut with a horribly lifelike smacking sound that made Kili, sitting nearest her, cringe. “Stop,” she said sharply. “Not another word out of any of you.”  
Gandalf raised his eyebrows. Thorin gave Lucy a deliberate look, silently prompting her to revise her statement, but she ignored him. He wasn’t her king.  
“Like it or not, natural or not, Beorn is what he is, and he is a good person.” The random snide comments and unkind remarks had been fraying at her temper regarding the subject since their arrival at the hall. “You’ve all either heard me say ‘orcs’ or been told by someone else, and if not, I’m saying it now: I was taken by orcs. And do you think I got away from them all by myself, injured and unarmed? Or do you think someone helped me? And who, out here in the wild, in this godforsaken, uninhabited expanse of orc territory, would be around to help me?!”  
No one wanted to look at her except Gandalf, who was eyeing her admiringly. It was a brave admission – to admit to the capture by orcs, to admit to her own helplessness, to admit to needing rescue. Most people tried to hide their own helplessness to some degree, but Lucy usually guarded hers compulsively.  
Lucy stood up, with some effort. Kili didn’t dare try to help her, even if his own comments about Beorn had been few and he was sitting closest to her. “It’s orc,” she added shortly. “The ink and vellum. Or did you suspect a creature who won’t eat flesh of making free people into books to narrate the account of his own race’s murder?”  
She stalked inside, gait stiffened by both anger and pain.  
For several minutes, the only sound was the buzzing of bees.  
“Well,” Balin said, finally.  
“Think before you speak, Master Balin,” Gandalf interrupted to advise. “Lucy is well in control of her faculties, and an excellent judge of character. You would all be wise to consider her words before you categorically dismiss them as the overreaction of someone frayed by pain and fear, simply because it is easier than reconsidering your own opinions.”  
“Of course not,” Balin said, offended. “I was going to say that we’d gone and put our feet well into our mouths.”

 

Dinner that night was oddly tense, with several of the dwarves awkwardly trying to make small remunerations to their host. They had no gifts. Beorn had no discernible sense of humor; he didn’t make jokes, so they couldn’t laugh at them. He didn’t offer opinions or even statements of fact to agree with. Instead, they just sat with the knowledge that they’d wrongfully harbored horrible thoughts.  
“Do you ride tomorrow?” Beorn asked as the eating began to trail off, appetites sated.  
“Walk, more like,” Thorin said, frowning into the fire.  
Beorn shook his head. “I will lend you ponies,” he said. “They will carry you as far as Mirkwood. Then you will turn them loose so that they may return.”  
Lucy kept quiet. Her back was immensely better, but not healed. The skin still relied on stitches to stay where it should. She still felt a tiny tearing sensation and a hot trickle of blood if she dared to laugh or gasp too hard, and she slept on her stomach every night. Oin would look her over in the morning, and though no one had yet told her, Lucy knew her continued presence with the Company was contingent on the healer’s opinion.  
It wasn’t a happy thought. Alone. Again. Left behind.  
And once again wandering Beorn’s lands half-healed and half-naked. Lucy frowned at the thought, not at all fond of moving backwards. In her experience, forward progress was always better – like many who’d experienced too much hardship, her life was an endless push to pass through the bad and reach the good, even when she didn’t quite believe in it anymore.  
Thorin advised everyone to rest up, with his usual words about first light, and members of the Company began to drift away from the table and towards their bedrolls. Lucy fidgeted with her fork, knowing that she wasn’t tired enough to sleep yet. She’d been sleeping a lot here, and finally seemed to be pulling out of it. Unfortunately, that meant her mind was alert and free to worry about the next morning. Healthy-enough or not. Alone or not. Opportunity under the Mountain, one last good chance . . . or not.  
Ori ignored the advice of both of his brothers as they retired, remaining in his place curled up on a stool by the banked fire, writing by its dim light. Lucy could tell by his manic scribbling that he was writing something for or to himself, and not the official Quest log, which he wrote with mechanical precision. She’d marveled over those runes before, unable to read them, of course, but amazed by the uniformity of the letters, from their size and shape to the depth of the scores Ori’s quill left in the page. Her own handwriting had always been incorrigible. When she’d declared her decision to attend medical school, her brother had laughed and said that at least now she could give up on her penmanship.  
The people around the fire dwindled to Beorn, Ori, Fili and Kili, Dwalin, Bifur, Lucy, and Bofur, a random and motley assortment. Bofur was trying to finish some carved toy before they set out, frowning over impossibly tiny wooden joints, but everyone but he and Ori lacked a task. The night owls of the Company, or perhaps the most nervous or preoccupied, whose minds refused rest.  
Lucy drew knives and forks together from across the table and began laying them down to play a game, one whose name she did not know, but one which she and Beorn had played a hundred times in the past. Especially in the first week or two after they’d met, when she was both terrorized and bored to death, and unable to do anything else for entertainment.  
Smiling, the skinchanger lifted one of the knives and set it perpendicular to its original placement. Lucy had remembered the layout wrong. The goal of the game was for each player to reorient their sticks by one hundred and eighty degrees, moving each stick only forty-five degrees at a time – usually different-colored stick were used, here knives and forks. One could block one’s opponent from doing the same by orienting one’s pieces in a way that prevented the rotation of theirs, so in the end, it was never zero-sum, but instead who had managed to accomplish more. Simple but engaging.  
“Lucy,” Ori asked softly, his voice loud in the quiet. He glanced at Fili, who had dozed off on Kili’s shoulder. “May I ask a question?”  
“Ask away,” Lucy said, frowning as Beorn moved a fork to counteract the move she had planned.  
Ori glanced around, wishing he’d chosen a more private moment. “Why do you want to go to Erebor so badly?”  
Lucy twitched, sending her knife more than forty-five degrees in one rotation. She corrected it. “How do you mean?”  
Swallowing, Ori said, “Well, it’s just . . . you’re hurt, and you’d still get your share of money if you stayed.” Under the clause that allowed injured members of the Company to be left behind, they still received their share of any profits. “So . . .”  
“I don’t have a home, either,” Lucy said simply. “I think I remember Bilbo making a speech about home outside the goblin caves –” It was hard to be sure, but she remembered his distinctive hobbit voice going on about something. “– and that’s all well and good, but I want to help because I know what it’s like to have the world ripped out from under you.” Literally. “It’s the worst thing that can happen to a person, let alone a whole mountain full of people. A quest to regain a lost home is perhaps the noblest endeavor I could ever hope to be a part of.” It was probably going to be the most singular endeavor she’d ever be a part of: dwarves, hobbit, gold-crazed dragon, wizard, pursuit by orcs . . .  
Ori was quiet for a moment, scribbling with fervor. Kili watched Lucy make some move, in their incomprehensible game, that made Beorn frown and rub his chin through his beard. “Is that it?” Ori asked finally, and Lucy bit down on a laugh even as the question made her nervous. Too quiet for laughter, and it still hurt her back considerably.  
“Isn’t that enough?” she parried.  
“You don’t sound very . . .” Ori waved his quill. “Impassioned?”  
“Well, there is another reason,” Lucy admitted, managing to finalize her first one hundred and eighty degree rotation. She glanced over at the young dwarf, smiling. “But it’s a secret.”  
Ori, Bifur, Kili, and Bofur chuckled, but Fili frowned. “What kind of a secret?”  
“The kind that doesn’t concern you,” Lucy replied without ire.  
Fili frowned. He was tired, but he was waiting for Kili. He was worried about him, though he wasn’t sure why yet, and so he’d begun to avoid leaving his younger brother alone. “Then why did you say anything?” he challenged Lucy, not like the idea of secret motives.  
“Because it didn’t occur to me to lie,” Lucy said, annoyance creeping into her voice. It seemed that she was more tired than she’d thought.  
“Does Uncle know about this secret?”  
“Thorin knows everything about me that he needs to,” Lucy replied tersely. “I swear, it’s no business of anybody but me.”  
“Let’s go to bed, Fee,” Kili suggested, getting up. He scooped his mother’s runestone off the table, dropping it back into his pocket. “You’re getting odd.”  
“Goodnight,” Lucy said, followed by mumbles from Bofur and Ori and something unintelligible from Bifur, who was fingering the axe blade in his skull thoughtfully.  
Big secret? he signed to Lucy across the table.  
She shrugged, signing back, Only to me.  
Bifur frowned. Any trouble?  
Not unless the gold prince tells the king and the king gets curious. It was easier to sign nouns and pronouns, single gestures, than it was to spell out names. Short descriptors often stood in their stead. The dam who’d taught Lucy the signs in prison had assigned her the moniker lost girl. Appropriate, but not entirely comfortable.  
Bifur nodded pensively. Lucy returned her attention to the game, ignoring Bofur, who had watched the entire conversation and was now eyeing her interestedly. You are good to Dwarves, Bifur finally stated, Lucy almost missing the rapidly signed words in her peripheral vision. I do not care to know the secret. I will talk to gold prince.  
Lucy felt a spark of relief. Any vote of confidence was reassuring. Maybe not . . . She didn’t know the sign for ‘necessary’ . . . important. Dark prince doesn’t care about secret, either.  
“What are you talking about?” Ori asked plaintively. “I can’t understand but one word in three.”  
Bifur snorted. Scribe should learn more lessons than just those for writing.  
Lucy laughed under her breath, Bofur chuckling. Beorn ignored it all with the air of someone used to being out of the loop, and who didn’t care. He was somewhat impressed that Lucy’s gameplay didn’t seem to suffer for her distraction.  
“They’re talking about keeping the secret a secret,” Bofur explained, amused. He liked pranks almost as much as the youngsters. “Thorin wouldn’t let the matter lie if Fili told him.”  
King worries too much, Bifur said with a sigh.  
“He has to worry, he’s a king,” Bofur said for Ori’s benefit. “If he didn’t mind everything and everyone all the time, it would all go to pieces.”  
Lucy agreed with him in theory. In practice, Thorin regularly annoyed her. As a secretive person who wasn’t technically under his dominion, except in the parameters of the quest, his royal manner, however necessary, chafed.  
She locked a third piece of hers into full rotation, and Beorn sighed.  
“I’ll talk to Fili,” Ori said, head high.  
Bofur chucked. “Will ye, now? Good luck, lad.”  
The scribe scowled but went back to his writing, and it wasn’t long before they all trundled off to bed. Bofur left his finally-finished work on the table, the last to leave the room. It was a small bear with a fearsome smile on its face, and one manacle around its left forepaw. When he discovered it among the bowls and mugs, hours after his guests departed, the skinchanger was surprised and pleased, more touched than he cared to admit. 

 

“You know that it wouldn’t be the worst thing,” Beorn said quietly, as Lucy stripped down for bed. There was really no room for self-consciousness between the two of them; there never had been, not since Beorn found her battered, bleeding, and half-dead deep in the mountains, dead orcs scattered all around her. Lucy had seen Beorn transition from man to bear and back on multiple occasions, a process which didn’t cotton well with modesty – or those weak of heart or stomach.  
“If they left you,” he explained at her questioning look. “You are always welcome here.”  
Lucy sighed as she stretched out on the half of the bed that had, at some point, become ‘hers’ when she was there to occupy it. “I know. And I appreciate it, really I do, and you know I care for you greatly, but . . . Erebor is one of the last few places that could send me home. I’ve gone far and wide looking everywhere else. I can’t rest until I’ve exhausted every possibility.”  
Beorn was quiet. He didn’t believe, at this point, that Lucy ever would get home. He didn’t believe it was possible to exhaust every possibility, that Lucy wouldn’t wander until the very end of her days, which only if she was very lucky would involve old age and not bloodshed. The knowledge did not sit well with him. “Still,” he deferred. “When that day comes, or if they leave you tomorrow. Stay.”  
Lucy nodded against her pillow, already half-asleep, and Beorn left her to her dreams.

 

Kili and Ori slouched against the wall outside the bedroom door the next morning, waiting for Oin and Lucy to emerge. “What if she’s not healed enough?” Ori fretted.  
“Then we don’t go,” Kili said practically, although the idea turned his stomach. Fire and danger and adventure and glory and honor, and the ancestral home of his people – his own romantic notions mixed in with the more serious concerns of a displaced people. “We said we wouldn’t, and we won’t.”  
“Even if Thorin leaves without us?”  
“Thorin won’t leave without you, me, your brothers, and the burglar,” Kili said firmly, although he wasn’t sure if Thorin wouldn’t take the matter literally into his own hands and bodily drag at least the prince and the burglar into Mirkwood.  
The moment the door opened, Ori whooped. The expressions on the Oin’s and Lucy’s faces were answer enough. He lunged towards Lucy for either a hug or to knock foreheads, reconsidered, and then bolted for the table, shouting excitedly that Lucy could come, Lucy was better. Oin sighed, rolling his eyes. “Not ‘better’!” he called, hurrying towards the table. “Just – not bad. No one go – slapping her on the back, or whatnot, I don’t know, just –”  
Kili gripped Lucy’s arm, returning her grin, and he gently knocked his forehead against hers. Lucy flinched a little at the impact, surprised, but she didn’t pull away. It didn’t hurt, either, she just hadn’t been expecting what she’d surmised to be a dwarvish kiss. “Well, that’s a relief,” she admitted, still a little breathless. Breathless from the stress, of course, nothing to do with Kili’s face only inches from hers, their foreheads bumping again as she spoke. The difference in their heights really wasn’t that great, three and a half, maybe four inches . . .  
“We’d not have left you,” Kili declared confidently. “Ori wouldn’t have let us.”  
Lucy laughed again, finally drawing back. “And you?” she asked archly. “Would you have left?”  
“Well, I’d have tried my best not to,” Kili admitted, grinning, “but I’m not sure my uncle wouldn’t have just knocked me over the head and dragged me to Erebor unconscious.”  
Laughing at the image that formed in her mind’s eye, Lucy almost didn’t notice Thorin standing at the end of the hallway. “I hear you are fit enough to ride,” he said, eyes moving slowly between his nephew and the human. Lucy fought the urge to make space between Kili and herself, knowing that would have looked more suspicious than their proximity. As it was, Kili promptly let go of her arm, his hand finding its way into his pocket instead. “I am glad, but if either of you wishes to eat before we leave, you had best hurry.”  
“Right,” Kili said, heading for the table. Lucy followed, ignoring Thorin’s gaze as she slipped by him in the corridor. He didn’t seem angry or even all that suspicious (of course not, why would he be?), but it still made her uncomfortable.  
So did the fact that the skin of her forehead buzzed all through breakfast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been through some extreme pain (though thankfully not this), but it's still impossible to fully convey the experience through words. I think I've done it something approximating justice, however, especially the struggle to pray through it. Whenever I had my incidents, my mother coaxed me into reciting poetry to distract me until we could get to the hospital.
> 
>  
> 
> Also: Hooray for primitive, crudely-derived amphetamines!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Escape from the Woodland Realm. I'm about to start getting a little weird with canon regarding the amount of time things take, but if Peter Jackson can take liberties with the timeline so can I.
> 
> No music here; not enough feels for music.
> 
> Also a shortish chapter, sorry. Although, if I recall correctly, Chapter 2 was kind of a whopper - so I suppose it all evens out by the end.  
> The next chapter is where we'll finally get a little bit of comfort to go with the hurt, and also finally the smut! Hooray for smut!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: violence (primarily against orcs), fairly graphic description of injury, body image insecurity (which in turn is somewhat indicative of deeper problems, both emotional and societal).

It was a short ride to Mirkwood, and one wonderfully free of orcs. They could hear warg cries and the snarls of some massive animal in the distance, however, and Lucy knew Beorn had swapped skins to draw them off. She winced whenever she heard him roar, although, of course, he’d taken on hundreds or thousands of orc packs in his time.  
As she personally knew, however, it only took one bad, unlucky blow to turn even a familiar fight against you.  
Gandalf was the first to dismount when they reached the forest’s edge, the others reluctant to follow suit when confronted with the sight of the dark trees. Lucy frowned at the wood, confused. She’d been through Mirkwood once before, and years ago, when it was called Greenwood, to visit Radagast. It had looked very different, then, and she knew that forests this old and massive should not change so quickly.  
“The Elven Gate,” Gandalf called back to them. “Here lies our path through.”  
“No sign of the orcs,” Dwalin observed, swinging down from his saddle. “We have luck on our side.”  
“Don’t you know better?” Lucy mock-scolded, dismounting, herself. The blue roan she’d ridden looked so much like Huckleberry that she wondered if the two had shared a dam or a sire, or both. She offered the animal an apple in thanks for the ride. “Never say when you’ve been lucky.”  
“Set the ponies loose,” Gandalf ordered, his eyes distant. “Let them return to their master.” Lucy followed his gaze, spotting Beorn outlined against the overcast sky where he stood on a bluff, in bear form. She fought the urge to wave, since he likely couldn’t see them as more than specks at this distance (she had no idea how well or poorly bears could see, especially not magical ones), and in his current form couldn’t interpret the gesture.  
She ignored Bilbo’s concerned questions and Gandalf’s reply, carefully sliding her arms through the straps of her jerkin. The familiar weight settled easily, since there was no injury to her shoulders where the straps fell. She had replaced the laces the goblins had cut through at Beorn’s hall, and now drew them only so tight that the jerkin fit loosely to her torso. It didn’t feel right, but it was better than entering a purportedly diseased forest without its protection, and better than the constant pain it would cause to draw the laces tight as she usually did. Just the light pressure of leather against her back was enough to make her grit her teeth, but there was no way she was walking into Mirkwood without its protection. Somehow, when Radagast, Beorn, Gandalf, and even Bilbo talked about the forest being sick, she didn’t think they meant blight or a drought.  
She was gingerly stretching to loosen up muscles made stiff by disuse when Gandalf strode out of the trees again, crying, “Not my horse! I need it!”  
Nori paused in the act of uncinching the saddle.  
“You’re not leaving us,” Bilbo protested. Lucy’s hands stilled on her belt.  
“I would not do this unless I had to,” the wizard replied, and she felt her stomach dropped. A magically diseased, by all accounts dangerous forest, and no wizard.  
That was a recipe for disaster if she’d ever heard one.

 

Greenwood had once been the kind of absurdly beautiful forest that had always seemed, to Lucy, like it was designed for long, rambling walks that ended in picnics, for laying in meadows to see shapes in the clouds, for braiding flower crowns. Idyllic.  
Mirkwood was not. It seemed to have been designed to inspire fear. The trees were gnarled, their half-bare branches reaching down towards the travelers like grasping hands. It was dim. There was a strange, moldy smell that Lucy’s nose refused to become accustomed to. Centipedes slithered across the path like slinky emissaries of ill will. The wood creaked and moaned in the wind.  
And the path was hard to follow, cloaked in a slimy mat of molding leaves. The dwarves tapped and stomped on the stone pavers as they went, to assure themselves that the path was still underfoot. Lucy trusted their judgment, Bilbo sticking close to her. “We’ll do fine without Gandalf,” Lucy told him, hoping that he wouldn’t retaliate that the last time they’d done so, they’d ended up with the goblins.  
“Hmm–? Oh, yes, right,” he said, with a flat, distracted smile, and Lucy frowned, wondering what else could have him preoccupied. She didn’t ask, though. The woods were enough to contend with, at the moment.  
Gandalf had given them dire but fairly typical warnings – don’t leave the path, don’t drink the water, don’t leave your mind open to illusion. Mirkwood was discomfiting and foreboding, but those were simple enough instructions to follow.  
Or so she’d thought.  
Oin was the first one to voice his delusion, although judging from the stumbling steps of everyone else and her own foggy head, Lucy would have bet he wasn’t the first to feel wrong. “Air!” he croaked. “I need air!”  
“You live under a mountain,” she reminded the healer, reaching ahead to grip his shoulder. “Tons of rock over your head, there. These trees are nothing.”  
“Keep moving,” Thorin seconded. “Nori, why have we stopped?”  
“The path – it’s disappeared!”  
They doubled back, of course, treading on one another’s feet in the process, jostling and confused, but the stones had melted out from underfoot. Lucy shook her head in a fruitless bid to clear it, frowning at a patch of toadstools off the path as they seemed to swell. They looked like they were going to burst, and horrible things would come flying out. She backed away quickly, bumping into Balin, who was slurring as he mumbled that nothing looked familiar.  
She blearily recollected what she’d said to Bilbo, and realized that she’d been very wrong. They were completely out of their league.

 

None of them knew, when they compared memories later, how long they’d wandered through Mirkwood, doggedly adhering to a plan to keep due East. They slept when it was dark, woke bleary and confused when day returned, hardly any lighter. They also couldn’t really gauge which direction was East, since the sun came down to the forest floor only in a dim glow. It was Bilbo, finally, who climbed up to seek out a real look at the sun, and Bilbo who returned to the darkness of the forest to find the rest of the Company bundled neatly into spider silk.  
None of them were really clear on how that had happened, either, after the fact. The silk contained a natural sedative, and they were already out of sorts from whatever bad air lay over the floor in a dense blanket, like toxic gas accumulating in the bottom of a mine.  
The impact with the Earth, when Bilbo cut them all down, was enough to break through the effects of both.  
Lucy came around already half-ripped out of her cocoon, her lower brain aware that it was being suffocated by confining silk, and taking appropriate measures, long before her conscious mind caught up to the fact. She had hardly kicked free of the last of the stuff, gasping, when the spiders came screaming down on them. The members of the Company screamed, too, weapons grabbed for with sedative-clumsy hands. Lucy fumbled her bow, arrow falling to the ground to be snapped in half under Bombur’s foot as he stumbled past, shouting in confusion and tearing at the silk still over his face. It drew her attention upwards, in time for her to spot Ori scurrying along the ground on his back, trying to evade the giant arachnid bearing down on him. Lucy managed to get two stars into the thing’s eye cluster without severing her own fingers, a third star going a hair too wide in her clumsiness, winking out of sight into the undergrowth. She hadn’t missed a shot that badly since she was thirteen and throwing stars at a plywood target.  
It was madness – spiders, of course, and no cohesive fighting pattern, no banding together. Everyone was scattered, panicked, half-drugged, hacking with skill only because of muscle memory, and, for a few of them, not even that. Lucy dropped her own sword more than once, since it was not a weapon she was long used to, and therefore not one she could manage under the circumstances.  
Her head cleared quickly, though, under the racing of her heart, and she stopped her crazed switching between weapons and decided on daggers, one in each hand, lunging into spiders who were distracted by other prey to attack the areas they left defenseless, too stupid to know better – spinnerets, joints, the narrow joining between body segments, eyes, of course, the notch under the mandibles – quickly becoming splattered with oddly colorless blood. It was the semi-opaque clear color of lymph fluid, and soaked right through to her skin.  
The air was filled with the squeals and screams of spiders, and shouts from the dwarves for help, names cried out so that person would look up and see danger bearing down on them, the thuds of axes and swords into dense flesh.  
They managed to clear the patch of forest floor of spiders inside a few minutes – or so it seemed – but more of the creatures were bearing down, scuttling towards them from all directions. “Hurry!” Thorin shouted. Lucy cast around, catching sight of grim, silk-splotched faces – Bombur, Oin, Ori, Thorin, Dwalin, Bifur, Fili, Gloin, Dori, Balin – where’s Bilbo?  
And suddenly, she was seeing unfamiliar faces in her search for the hobbit’s – elf faces, bowstrings drawn back to press into their high, delicate cheekbones as they glared at the Company down the length of their drawn arrows.  
“Do not think I won’t kill you, dwarf,” warned the blond whose arrow was sighted on Thorin. The king glowered back. “It would be my pleasure.”  
Lucy looked around again, alarmed, and realized that they were wildly outnumbered. There were at least two dozen elves in her field of vision, most with arrows locked on the Company, the others with swords in hand.  
Someone shouted behind them, and Fili wheeled, yelling his brother’s name. Lucy’s head snapped around, eyes spotting Kili as he fell, a spider bearing down, pincers clacking as he thrashed, trying to reach his sword where it had fallen.  
She sent four stars in immediate succession, the spider screaming as it pitched to the side, going into death throes. Half the Company surged forward, desperate, but all were held back by elvish glares, their threat implicit. The blond elf in charge eyed Lucy with mild interest, and she bristled under his haughty gaze. Fools reveal their secrets.  
But there hadn’t been time to think, not at that moment, not when fear clamped instantaneously around her heart like a vice, a reaction usually reserved for the sight of an orc’s face. She kept her head down, trying to slow her pounding heart.  
One of the elves walked over to retrieve Kili, who was brought to the rest of them gasping and scowling. He bumped foreheads with Fili, nodding to his uncle, too far away to receive the same, and surprised Lucy by lightly, subtly grasping her hand. She gave him a nod in return, before they both let go.  
The order was given in Sindarin for them to be searched, the dwarves protesting in anger and confusion as they were drawn out of their close-knit knot. Kili made a grab for Lucy that she didn’t notice, but his brother did. Fili frowned, but was quickly distracted by the elf who seemed determined to find every one of his knives. (He’d learned to hide them from Nori, of course, and was sure he’d learned enough to make it through inspection with a few still on his person.)  
Lucy had similar aspirations. She tolerated the searching performed by her own elf grudgingly, snapping at him in Sindarin when he tried to get a hand into her jerkin. He sneered, clearly disgusted by the implicit suggestion and aiming to insult her in return, but she didn’t care. Obviously he hadn’t been after anything sexual; it had never crossed her mind, but using it as a defense had. And it had worked.  
The blond elf, the leader, was less deterred by insults, and gave Lucy a more thorough pat-down before he stepped back, eyes narrowed. He’d found the panel of her jerkin where the stars had been stored, of course, and confiscated the remaining half-dozen with raised brows, his cool gaze flicking over her in well-hidden surprise. He also found the similar panel on the other side of her ribs, where flat throwing knives were to be found. Lucy scowled and struggled like they were her last reserve, well aware of the needle-thin knives still on her person, slid into the jerkin next to the boning of the bodice.  
And though he clearly wasn’t satisfied, the blond elf let the matter lie, unwilling to linger much longer in the forest with spiders so nearby. She was just a human, anyway, and a young one at that. Surely, whatever tricks she had were few.  
She almost blew it by laughing, though; she had to bite her tongue to keep quiet as the elf commander moved away, because she’d caught sight of Fili as the elf moved out of her line of sight, and the blond prince was smirking as he held open his vest to show that there was nothing left inside, only for the elf searching him to find a small dagger tucked under the back of his collar. She took her amusement as a sign the spider sedative was still making her a little loopy. Something to keep an eye on . . .  
Kili had fared no better than his brother, and was glowering.  
Bilbo was still nowhere to be seen. Lucy’s chest went tight with anxiety, but he’d been out of sight in the goblin caves, too, and even just now, before the spiders struck. That seemed to be his strategy, and it worked . . . Surely that was the cause of his absence now. And not something more dire.  
The blond elf, meanwhile, was distracted by the presentation of Thorin’s Elvish blade. He dismissed and insulted Thorin in a few swift sentences, clearly insulted that such an object had ever been soiled by non-elvish hands.  
When the blond gave the order for the Company’s hands to be tied, Lucy protested so violently that he had to concede, allowing her six inches of spare rope between her hands. He was haughty, but not cruel. The Human had panicked at the order, genuinely, some past horror rising up behind her eyes. If a spare bit of rope made her calm enough to walk to his home without her injuring herself – or even anyone else, she was quick for a Human, a nasty bruise already blooming on one of his warrior’s cheeks – so be it. She couldn’t feasibly escape; even if the extra length let her reach some tool or weapon, there were more than enough Elves around to nip the escape attempt in the bud.  
Lucy fidgeted with her bonds as they walked, picking and pulling, her wrists quickly going red and hot under the cordage. The blond elf noticed, but said nothing, looking ahead again.  
She kept her head down, trying to avoid the sympathetic, disparaging, curious, or concerned looks that may or may not have been sent her way. Especially from Thorin. She could imagine his irritated, icy glare, and didn’t want to see it now. He had to think she was a liability to the Quest, at this point. Injured, too headshy to let her hands be tied with the grudging calm and dignity of the others, and by elves no less.  
Lucy did look up when they entered the elvish city, despite herself. It was eerily beautiful, of course, and gave the sense of being both indoors and outdoors. Flowing architecture, golden light sifting down from high windows, gracefully carved wood and stone. The graceful, railing-less walkways made her nervous, though; Rivendell had railings to make its many non-elvish guests feel at home, and she didn’t like the feeling that here, she could pitch over the edge of the walkway and into death without anything to grab onto.  
They quickly left the soaring open spaces behind, though, moving down to ground level and further, into the Earth. Lucy didn’t like that too much, either, but it was well-lit and spacious and, in the end, didn’t trigger any fear.  
Perhaps the spiders and the incident with the wrist-binding had exhausted her allotment of panic for the day. Normally she could have tolerated the ropes, but the bad air and the spiders and the splinter of terror seeing Kili on the brink of death . . . and she still had no idea what had become of Bilbo . . .  
Even the cell doors were pretty, iron bars wrought into strong geometric arches that seemed reminiscent of vines. Lucy balked at hers, the elf whose hand gripped her elbow remembering her struggle over the wrist-binding and finagling her into the cell before she could get too worked up over it.  
Her heart kicked into double-time when the door slammed, but that was it. Lucy rubbed her freed wrists, surprised by the sharp lances of pain, which were quickly followed by a low throb from her back.  
She hadn’t forgotten it, of course, and it had hurt even through the spider sedative and adrenaline – she remembered scattered moments of ripping red pain that she had ignored, in the heat of combat, now that she stopped to think about it.  
Another throb. Sedative and adrenaline were both wearing off.  
Lucy gingerly sat down on the bench-bunk carved out of the rock wall of her cell as the sounds of dwarves meeting iron rose up through the cavernous prison, grunts and shouts sounding until Balin cried, “Leave it! There’s no way out! This is no orc dungeon. These are the halls of the Woodland Realm. No one leaves here without the king’s consent.”  
There were several moments of glum silence, and then Dori’s voice.  
“Ori? Where are you?”  
“Over here!”  
“I’m here,” Nori called to his brothers.  
Lucy listened carefully, because it distracted her from her back, though she couldn’t foresee the mental map she made being useful. Thorin was across the hall from her, but far down to her left. Fili was in the cell nearest his uncle’s, with Oin and Gloin on his other side, and then Balin and Dori. Dwalin was across from his brother and beside Bifur and Bofur. Bombur had the next cell over to himself, with Nori beside him. On Dwalin’s far side was Ori, and then Kili, and then Lucy.  
She tipped her head back to rest against the rough wall, wondering if her neighbor was doing the same, with two feet of rock between them.  
“How’s your back?” he asked quietly, as the others began to chatter to and fro across the hall.  
“Not bad.” Lucy moved closer to the door, painstakingly, so she could hear him better. It was more or less true. She had no way of inspecting the damage for herself, which left pain her only gauge, and the pain wasn’t terrible. At least not yet.

 

The Elf King interrogated them all one by one, and at random. Lucy had heard stories of Thranduil, none of them good, and sat gripping her hands together nervously, rubbing hard at the patch of scar where her left smallest finger should have been. Her one consolation was that the dwarves returning to their cells were in bad temper, but physically unharmed.  
She didn’t fear pain, not really – Lucy could bear most broken bones with gritted teeth, accidental scrapes and cuts with good cheer, even when they were deep. Extreme cold and heat didn’t bother her much, nor did sitting for long periods of time in soaked clothing or uncomfortable conditions.  
She feared torture, definitely – the prolonged, relentless, and inexorable application of precise and merciless suffering, denigration, and mutilation. If that made her weak, then she was weak. There was nothing to be done about it, nothing that could stop the memories that came howling back when she started to think maybe she wasn’t that afraid, after all.  
The elves came for her almost last, of course, so she had time to work herself into a decent case of nerves. Kili offered her a smile from behind his cell bars, when she came into view, one that she returned without it reaching her eyes.  
Standing had made her back hurt worse, too. She walked stiffly to spare her skin any unnecessary tugging and sliding, but it still took an effort to breathe normally by the time they reached the elf lord.  
Thranduil was waiting with his back turned, hands clasped neatly behind him. Lucy wondered if he’d tired of dwarvish stubbornness, and that was why he’d chosen to speak to the lone human at so random a juncture, or if his minions were just grabbing people willy-nilly.  
He turned slowly, no doubt meaning to impress, but the shiver that went down Lucy’s spine was one of distaste, and not attraction. Thranduil had cold eyes, however pretty his face, and it wasn’t all that pretty, either, not to her. She preferred warm eyes and easy smiles and the familiarity of sunburn and callus and scars.  
She hid her distrust, regarding him levelly. Thranduil skimmed his gaze down and up again, noting her sturdy, compact build and muscles, her steady gaze, her knife-scarred jerkin, her pink cheeks and wide pupils in contrast to her composure.  
“What is your name?” he asked, when he’d finished his cursory inspection and drawn his conclusions.  
“Lucy Bell.” She couldn’t think of a reason to lie.  
His gaze was unsettling even as it remained unthreatening. “How old are you?”  
The question surprised her, though perhaps it shouldn’t have, because she did look a little younger than she was – fresh-faced, her grandmother said; round face, eyes, and chin combining to give an impression of tender years.  
“Twenty-six,” she replied. No call, again, for lying. She caught a hint of surprise in Thranduil’s eyes, but the blond elf by the throne gasped aloud. The king shot him a dark look, and he drew himself up, face hardening.  
“And how do you find yourself in the company of so many Dwarves?” Thranduil pressed.  
Lucy decided it was best not to reply at all. She studied the blond elf from earlier, standing beside the throne so still that he’d escaped her notice until her gasped. He seemed to be studying her wrists.  
Thranduil’s eyes narrowed.  
“Father,” the blond elf said, the interruption of silence making the word seem louder than it was. “She’s injured.”  
Lucy glanced down at her wrists, noticing as she did the dark lines of blood that had seeped through her left sleeve. She’d been too distracted by her back to notice, but now she pushed the cloth up to her elbow, studying the self-inflicted wounds. Four torn stitches, between the two cuts. The blond elf looked away, too composed for Lucy to guess if the cause was empathy or disgust.  
She sighed. Any and all supplies she could have used for stitching were in her pack. Which the elves had taken. And so were her spare arrows and knives, the rest of her stars, a few drawings Ori had given her . . .  
“Answer the question,” Thranduil said, ignoring his son.  
“I like dwarves,” Lucy said, lifting her gaze as she worked the sleeve back down into place. It was true, just not strictly the explanation for her presence with the Quest. And she spoke Sindarin, to watch the king’s eyes widen almost imperceptibly. Her accent was impressive, after the weeks in Rivendell, and she knew it.  
“If you travel with them simply because you like them, then why do they travel here?” Thranduil parried in Westron.  
“It is not my place to say,” Lucy replied. Again in Sindarin, although she knew it was less than wise to provoke the notoriously unstable elf lord.  
The faint ghost of a sneer twitched at his upper lip. “Return to your cell, then.”  
“I require a healer,” Lucy said, in Westron, because she needed one and needling him wasn’t the way to get one.  
He glanced at the bloody sleeve. “I believe you will survive,” he said dryly.  
“That is not the injury that concerns me,” Lucy replied, keeping the edge out of her voice. “Our party suffered capture by goblins recently. I have other wounds you do not see.”  
Thranduil ignored her, ascending to his throne and sitting smoothly. “Legolas,” he said, gesturing to his son, who stepped forward to take Lucy by the elbow, leading her away.  
Lucy scowled, but she walked where she was led without a fight. Unease stirred in her gut, though, when they reached a corridor that branched two ways, and Legolas turned to the right. They had come from the left.  
“Where are we going?” The words came out in Sindarin, and sharper than she’d intended.  
“You require a healer,” Legolas said, surprised by her tone. She stopped short, and he allowed it. He couldn’t make sense of her suspicions, but it was clear that she had some, judging by the intense frown on her face.  
Lucy didn’t like this. Thranduil had said no to a healer. Why would this elf, even if he was the king’s son, and presumably would therefore bear no consequences, take her to one anyway? There was no benefit for him in doing so. The usual altruism of elves would have usually let Lucy go along willingly, but she remembered the talk of wood-elves being not nearly as temperate or wise as their kin, and after the display their lord had just given, she didn’t trust Legolas as far as she could throw him. (Especially considering the lightness of elvish bodies, meaning she could probably throw him a decent distance.)  
“Your hands are unbound,” he pointed out, when several seconds had passed in silence. “You walk under your own power. You say you are injured, but you will not come to aid.”  
“There’s a healer with us,” Lucy said, lifting her chin. “Take me to his cell.”  
Legolas snorted. “A Dwarf?”  
“He’s perfectly capable,” Lucy rejoined, his racism renewing her scowl. “He has cared for me so far.”  
The elf shook his head. “You are injured, and too young to know what is best. The fact that anyone let you out into the world at your age is shocking. Come with me.”  
And, taking a firmer but very careful grip on her arm, he led her down the hallway.  
“I’m perfectly capable of making sound judgments,” Lucy snapped as they walked. Legolas shook his head, half-towing his reluctant prisoner. “I’m young, not foolish.”  
“Yes, and I suppose that is why you choose to travel with Dwarves, and would let their filthy hands anywhere near your wounds,” the elf rejoined, refraining from rolling his eyes. They reached the halls of healing, and he opened the door, guiding Lucy through it ahead of him. He didn’t doubt that she’d take a swing at him and bolt if she had half a mind to.  
Lucy shook her head, unable to formulate a response that could debunk a lifetime of ageism and racism whatever other -isms were at play. She was relieved to see, however, that they stood in a healing hall, and not some other room. Her guard was earnest in his concern, at least. Of course, the trip to the healer could have been to put her at ease, like her lack of restraints, but it seemed like an improbably long shot.  
The nearest available healer was one of only two in the room, as no one in the Woodland Realm was currently injured, and they were not expecting any influx of the ill or injured. “One of the party found in the woods, my prince?” he asked Legolas, who nodded. “Will you translate for her?”  
“There is no need,” Lucy replied in Sindarin, surprising the older elf, who did not show it. She studied him, and then lifted her chin to indicate the healer at the far end of the room. “I would prefer to be attended to by the female, with all due respect, and my thanks.”  
The healer nodded and went to get his colleague, while Lucy sat down on the low bed of the nearest station. Legolas wondered why she would possibly care about the gender of her healer, and then cringed internally. The obvious reason. She was so young, though, that he could almost allow himself to dismiss the idea. Almost.  
The female healer did not speak Westron either, but it wasn’t necessary. Legolas remained within the obligatory distance of the prisoner, as a responsible member of the guard, visual privacy granted by the use of a folding screen, but auditory privacy impossible. Lucy watched his shadow move behind the linen panel as the healer efficiently stripped her of shirt, chest cloth, and bandages.  
The elf gasped, of course – a swift, nearly silent, elvish gasp, but still an unmistakable sound of surprise. What she’d expected to see under the bandages, Lucy had no idea. The full-back coverage was indicative of little else but a flogging. Maybe it was the nature of the lashes, scored deep and ragged by the bone shards in the whip.  
Quick, nimble fingers moved over the damaged skin, pressing and probing so swiftly that it hardly had time to hurt, pain arriving when the touch had already moved on. Lucy was silent, though her breathing became uneven; she didn’t want to gratify anyone’s belief that she was a child by crying out like one.  
“These were very deep,” the healer said finally, “but are not very old.”  
“An elvish salve has been applied to them twice a day, beginning one day after the injury occurred, some ten or twelve days ago,” Lucy replied over her shoulder. Oin had kept up tending to everyone’s injuries, doggedly, even in the haze of the forest. “It was crafted in Rivendell, though I do not know its name or its components.”  
The healer made a quiet noise of agreement, not pleased that Lucy knew so little, but not surprised. Patients of every race often knew startlingly little about their own care. “I see that they were stitched closed.” Her tone would have dripped disdain if she were anything but an elf, but as it was she sounded only mildly displeased.  
“Are the stitches torn?”  
“Many of them, yes. The method is crude and ineffective.”  
Lucy sighed. Her back was going to look like a fucking patchwork quilt, at this point. “May I have a mirror?”  
“I do not believe that that would be wise.”  
“Would you deny that it is my injury, my body, and therefore my right to bear my own witness to it?” Lucy returned, a little sharp.  
The elf handed her a mirror, silently radiating disapprobation, and held a second in place to make Lucy’s inspection easier.  
The sight took the air right out of her lungs. Bad. Very bad, still. She’d gotten much worse from the orcs, though. No wonder she was in so much pain – there was no infection, but there was swelling and bruising and gashes tearing at the edges and torn stitches and deep lacerations weeping blood and exudate and –  
Lucy quickly passed back the mirror, focusing on the edge of the bed between her knees. The elf accepted the object without any word towards an “I told you so,” and resumed her work.  
“Was the whip clean?” the healer asked.  
“No.” The elf nodded, unsurprised, but Legolas’ shadow jerked slightly, drawing Lucy’s attention. Twenty-six was a child, to elves, hardly even out of infancy. Even knowing that humans had short lifespans and aged more quickly, twenty-six was too small a number even for that mental reconciliation. Legolas shook his head as his stomach roiled. Someone had whipped a twenty-six-year-old? Severely enough to make a seasoned elf healer gasp at the sight? She was so young, and yet she had hidden pain that had to be terrible, and stood before his father without a tremor in her voice or her limbs.  
“Some of these scars show the healing of years,” the healer remarked neutrally.  
Years. So it had been going on for years. Legolas closed his eyes.  
“Things happen,” Lucy sighed, and she sounded so old. Even to another human, she would have sounded old. “Those don’t hurt anymore.”  
Legolas set his jaw. He had to speak to his father. Whatever fate he condemned the dwarves to, and it would doubtless be terrible, and the unfortunate Human child had no place sharing their fate. 

 

Kili was surprised to see Lucy returning in new clothes – elf clothes, though they weren’t terribly different from her usual garb, which favored earthy tones just as heavily. She’d retained her jerkin, though, and looked better than before – pinker, not as sallow. And clean, her hair braided back wet.  
He waited until the elf guard was gone to speak. “They gave you clothes? And a bath?”  
“Thranduil may be one crazy treefucker, but his people don’t hold with child abuse,” Lucy replied, sitting down near her door so she could hear him clearly.  
“You’re not a child!” Kili’s voice had a vehemently indignant bite that surprised even him, even knowing his own reasons.  
Lucy was glad that someone agreed with her. “I am to them,” she said sourly, bracing her elbows against her knees. “And they won’t be convinced otherwise.”  
Kili frowned, his head falling back to knock against the wall. “How old are you?”  
“Oh, not you, too,” Lucy snapped. “No. Just no.”  
“She’s twenty-six,” a voice called helpfully.  
“Balin!” Lucy complained. “Why are you listening?”  
“Because you’re talking loudly,” Bofur shouted, and there was scattered laughter, but not a lot. It was Thorin’s turn with Thranduil, and no one was optimistic about the outcome.  
Kili moved to the floor so he could sit right up against the barred door. Lucy, hearing his clothes on the rock, did the same. “It’s ten years more than the age of majority in most cities of humans,” Lucy told him, reluctant to defend something so stupid, but not wanting him to fall into the same senseless beliefs as the wood-elves.  
The internal math was quick and easy – Kili had always been decent at figures, even if he often pretended not to be. “You’re about my age, then.” An adult, but too young for marriage or craft mastery.  
“Right,” Lucy agreed, relieved.  
“How’s your back?”  
“Much better. The wood-elves might not be as friendly as their cousins, but their salves work just as well.” Her whole back was pleasantly numb, and so was the cut on her arm. When she mentioned to the healer that numbing her arm wasn’t necessary, the elf had only arched a brow and asked if Lucy was really so absurdly stoic as to tolerate any pain unnecessarily. It was actually a fair point, although Lucy had just meant to save the stuff for someone else, used as she was to a life of careful rationing. The luxury of numbing pain that wasn’t awful felt indulgent.  
The healer had also pulled the stitches and replaced them with spider silk as a binder directly in the wounds, an idea which had skeezed Lucy out more than a little even after the elf explained that it came from a domestic breed of spider kept for the purpose, and not from the monstrous creatures that had attacked her Company.  
It felt better. Not as pinched. No tugging. Silk felt more natural than stitches, surprisingly, and Lucy was quite used to having stitches.  
“How are you?” she asked Kili. “You weren’t hurt, were you?”  
“Bumps and bruises,” he replied. “Most of the marks will wash right off.”  
Lucy chuckled. “Maybe if you tell Legolas you’re only my age, he’ll let you take a bath, too.”  
Kili felt an immediate lance of intense dislike at the sound of an Elvish name. When had names been exchanged? That hateful blond – he seized upon Lucy’s apt insult – treefucker. “He’s handsome, for an elf,” he said slowly, somewhat inanely, because all elves were lovely.  
Lucy made a face, unseen. “Eh,” she said without interest. “I suppose so . . . but he’s not really what I look for. I’d snap that in half.”  
Kili let out a startled laugh, delighted. “Prefer a sturdier sort?”  
“Definitely,” Lucy said firmly, and then shut up. She felt suddenly uncomfortable, though there was no real reason for it – but that was another lie. She was uncomfortable because Kili was a very sturdy sort, and had sunburn and scars and a ready smile and warm eyes and all kinds of other desirable features that were increasingly . . . noticeable. She didn’t want to admit it to herself though, not if her attraction would go away in its own time. There was no hope or point to it. It wasn’t smart to fuck friends.  
Kili’s face felt warm, too, and he was glad no one could see him blushing like a child – like Ori, who was much prone to blushing, and he didn’t want to be like Ori. (Poor dwarrow, all stuttering and knitwear and nervousness and should-I-or-shouldn’t-I, no thank you.) It was a foolhardy suggestion, but he said foolhardy things all the time – let the words tumble out before he’d thought them through, brash and careless. He had to be careful with Lucy, though. She was quicker and cleverer than him, no doubt about it, even quick and clever as he was.  
Even if her response was encouraging, and he could feel a goofy little smile on his face. He surveyed the ceiling of his cell almost contentedly, head resting back against the wall, worrying the runestone his mother had given him in his hand. Idly, he wondered what she would say if she knew her son was so taken with a human. Likely nothing good.  
Lucy was humming, and in his distraction took Kili a moment to recognize the tune. “Ninety-Nine Tankards of Ale on the Bar.” He grinned. “Do you want to annoy Uncle? Or just our guards?” he inquired.  
“Hmm. I suppose it makes the most sense to wait for Thorin to return, so we can do both at once,” Lucy said mock-thoughtfully, smiling, but when Thorin returned, it wasn’t the time for obnoxious behavior of any kind. He was visibly tense, and snarled at Balin when he asked if Thranduil had made an offer – of course he had, morally ambiguous madman that he was, and of course Thorin had told him to go shove it up his ass.  
Lucy had to guess that last bit, as she still had virtually no understanding of Khuzdul, but from the groans of various dwarves and Kili’s snicker, it was either that or something very similar.  
“Well, that’s that, then,” Balin said succinctly. “A deal was our only hope.”  
“Not our only hope,” Thorin replied. Lucy realized he was waiting on Bilbo to make a reappearance, or Gandalf. Both had saved them all before. 

 

The hours in the dungeons of the Woodland Realm grew longer and longer even as they passed, the lack of natural light making it even harder to gauge the passage of time. Fili and Kili talked back and forth for a while, as did many of the others, but after a while the calling out grew tiring.  
Lucy stared at the unchanging face of the wall opposite her, still seated by the door. She and Kili had spoken on and off throughout the afternoon, with more of the latter, but she hadn’t wanted to move too far from the door in the event that he wanted to talk again. It was that boring.  
And boring was bad, because her mind inevitably found its way into the painful parts of her being – memories, things lost, things that probably would never be again.  
“If you could be anywhere else, where would you be?” Lucy surprised herself as much as Kili by the question, but brooding made her maudlin, and she wanted the distraction.  
Kili considered the question. He had a host of favorite places back in Ered Luin, but it wasn’t hard to choose which one he most wanted at that moment. “I’d be in my mother’s kitchen. With the fire low, and tomorrow’s bread baking in the coals, dinner keeping warm above it, and her at the table across from me and Fili. Dwalin and Thorin coming in for dinner any minute, knocking the mud off their boots at the door . . .”  
Lucy liked that. It sounded cozy – not what you’d expect, from a prince, but the pair of them had humble origins due to the fall of Erebor. Thorin had been a smith-for-hire most of their lives, to earn income for his sister and her children, not to mention to rest of the dwarves displaced by the dragon. Breadwinner and community leader. It really was no wonder Thorin rarely smiled.  
“You?”  
“Home,” Lucy said, minimizing by reflex, but then she relented. “My grandparents’ house. They lived there their whole life together, ever since they were married.” She pictured the faded rose wallpaper in the kitchen and living room, the wood-patterned vinyl floors, the shag carpeting in the den that her grandmother always insisted was ‘goldenrod’ but which looked more like bad mustard. “It’s about as much a family home as it can be. My grandfather died in their bed. My mother grew up there. My brother and I lived there when we were older.”  
“But not when you were small?” Kili tried to picture Lucy when she was a child, but he hadn’t seen very many human children and the image wouldn’t form.  
“No. Only later.” She’d been sixteen, Peter newly thirteen, both of them weedy-thin and pale, Peter freckled under his Coke-bottle glasses. She’d found those things in the old-glasses donation box in the school office, had swiped the whole thing for a few hours so he could try them all on, found the pair that helped the most, returned the box . . .  
It sounded like something had happened to her parents, and not something good. Frown deepening, Kili tried to move the conversation away from it. “Where does your brother live, again?” She’d mentioned him several times, in the present tense, so he had to be alive, at least.  
A beat of silence, and then: “I don’t know.”  
Estranged, then. Kili grimaced. Was it possible to take a single step into Lucy’s past without coming down on something sharp?  
Lucy shifted her position on the floor to get more comfortable. She would have sworn that she could feel Kili’s stress through the wall, probably because at this point they knew each other quite well. He didn’t know much about her past, but no one did, and Lucy knew a lot about his. Both princes were free with reminiscing and the telling of anecdotes; really all of the dwarves were. And she’d long learned that someone’s past wasn’t really the important part – a person’s story explained who they had been, and maybe how they had come to be, but you didn’t need to know it to know who they were now.  
It was an imbalance between friends, though, that Kili knew so little about her past. Ori knew a little more, because she knew the scribe was a good one for keeping secrets, but she didn’t think Kili would betray any informal confidences, either.  
“My grandparents took me and Peter in when we were half-grown,” she explained, elaborating on her earlier, cagey answer. “Our mother died.”  
Kili considered that, eyes shifting over the ceiling. He rubbed his runestone thoughtfully. “Your father?”  
Lucy smiled to herself, rubbing the scar on her left hand. “I sprang from my mother’s brow fully formed, too.”  
A smile tugged at his mouth as Kili remembered that conversation, all the way back in Rivendell, although it really wasn’t funny, the two of them without fathers. Three if you counted Fili. Six if you counted the brothers Ri, none of whom had a strong recollection of their father, though he had died a hero and was recognized by history and polite society. Fili and Kili’s father had been erased completely. No mention of him was ever made, and when those who pretended not to have known him died, it would be like he’d never existed at all. Worse than death.  
Kili didn’t even know the dwarf’s name, or his crime. It used to keep him up nights, wondering, once he was finally old enough to wonder, and then old enough to figure out the mechanism at work, the erasing of a person.  
“What’s your mother like?” Lucy drew her knees up to her chest gingerly, with no unbearable protest coming from her back.  
Kili found himself chuckling again. “Formidable. You’ll love her.”  
Lucy caught the definitive tense. “Oh?” she asked archly. “When will we meet?”  
“After Erebor has been reclaimed, of course,” Kili replied, lightly, slipping easily from earnestness to pantomime. “The Dwarves of Durin will return to the Mountain, and there will be some work to be done settling in, of course, but then there will be legendary celebrations – feasts to last for days, dancing in the very streets. We’ll be the guests of honor, obviously, immortalized in legend and song.”  
Lucy laughed, unable to imagine any lyrics that would do justice to Fili and Kili tag-teaming the work of moving Thorin’s tobacco pouch from pocket to pocket of his clothes until the king was purple-faced in frustration with what he believed to be his own failing memory.  
Come to think of it, there was no way to imagine quite a few of them immortalized – earnest, lovable Ori, brave and homesick Bilbo, toymakers Bifur and Bofur . . . and herself, of course. It was easy to describe a dedicated and fierce king like Thorin, a strong and fearsome warrior like Dwalin. What room was there in legend and song for a lost girl with more scars than most sell-swords and nightmares that woke even others in the night?  
“That’s when you’ll meet her,” Kili concluded. “During all of the celebrations. She and Thorin will doubtless assign us all to some pretentious order or fellowship for our work, rewards of land or titles or somesuch. I’ll have to wear a circlet,” he added as an afterthought.  
The last was said glumly enough that Lucy smiled, even though she knew she wouldn’t be awarded to any order, or any other such nonsense. She was an outsider. Not a dwarf. Not even of this world.  
In her imagination, a circlet suited Kili’s looks quite well, though of course he probably stashed the status symbol in decorative vases or under seat cushions whenever he could. Fili was probably much more responsible about the whole affair.  
Because he was the heir, and the heir had to be good. “Does Fili know how much you cover for him?” She asked it without thinking. It was too personal a question.  
“Oh, aye,” Kili answered. “Ever since it all started – we were about five and seven, I’d imagine, and Thorin caught us at something. He was laying it on thick about honor and responsibility even then, and I saw Fee getting close to crying and I just –” Kili shrugged. “I knew he would be a good king. He didn’t have to behave all the time just to prove that to Uncle.”  
“You’re a good brother.”  
“I think so,” Kili said, tossing and catching his runestone. “Fee used to think so. But he’s getting older, and the Quest has made him more serious about some things.” He made serious sound like an insult, making Lucy smile slightly on her side of the wall. “And, I suppose, if you hear a thing often enough, you start to believe it . . . he’s started telling me to be more responsible lately, less reckless, to play fewer jokes, as if he’s forgotten that he and I were always just the same, until all this Quest business started.”  
Lucy considered that. Fili played pranks with them, and told jokes, and teased Bilbo and Ori and bickered with his brother, but he was more reserved than Kili. She’d noticed it on the very first day of the quest – Fili had his uncle’s bearing, the bearing of a king.  
“It wouldn’t really matter,” Kili remarked thoughtfully, “except that he’s lying to himself, a bit.”  
“It wouldn’t really matter if it didn’t hurt,” Lucy protested. The first time that Peter had snapped at her that she wasn’t his mother and he didn’t need her to take care of him, it had cut her to the bone. She rarely cried, but she’d wept until her tear ducts ran dry, after that, and then she’d gone out and gotten into a fistfight that ended with black eyes and sore ribs all around.  
“Aye, that too,” Kili acknowledged quietly, rubbing his thumb over the runestone’s markings.  
Lucy worked an arm between the two bars nearest the wall, and when he spotted her hand, Kili did the same to slide his fingers through hers, surprised and touched. It was uncomfortable, though, both of them quickly drawing their arms back into their own cells.  
Kili closed his eyes, tired. “I think it’s nighttime,” Lucy commented, judging by her own urge to yawn. “We should sleep.”  
It took a while for either to sleep, though, listening to the echoes of talk between elf guards, the whispers of the other dwarves, the breathing of the person in the next cell.

 

The next day was just as dull as the one before. The only real event of the day was Legolas coming by to collect Lucy for a visit to the healer. She didn’t think it was strictly necessary, but jumped at the chance to get out of her cell.  
“Has the dwarf king told you of the fate he chose for himself and his people?” Legolas asked as they headed back towards the dungeon.  
“I wouldn’t be so sure about forever,” Lucy replied, rubbing her forearm. The healing tissue was beginning to itch – not in the painful, insistent way of infection, but in the mild manner of new skin encroaching on loosening scabs. “We’re a clever bunch.”  
The elf shook his head, smiling. “There has never yet been an escape from our halls.”  
“Our party has never yet been contained here,” Lucy quipped, and the smile widened a little.  
“I would not concern myself too terribly with escape, if I were you,” Legolas said, gently batting her hand away from her arm. “Stop bothering that.”  
“Why wouldn’t you?” Lucy asked, frowning.  
“Because you are a child, and not one of Thorin’s people,” he replied. “I have discussed the matter with my father. You are to be taken back to your people.”  
Even in her upwelling of shock, Lucy thought, That’d be a neat trick. “Have you discussed this with your father?” she asked, hiding her trepidation. Where would the elves take her? If it was Laketown, there was no real problem, but anywhere else and she might not be able to rejoin the Company in time if – when – they escaped.  
“It was his idea,” Legolas replied, gesturing for Lucy to precede him down the long flight of stairs into the dungeons.  
Lucy considered that for a moment. Doubtless, Thranduil had taken up the plan because it would add to the general suffering of the dwarves. The loss of a Company member would not be taken lightly, even if that person lived, and to have them removed by the now-hated elf lord would really cause upset.  
“It will be good for you, to be with your own people,” Legolas offered, unable to see Lucy’s face to interpret the cause of her silence.  
“It rarely has been before,” she rebutted. Her own kind were as varied a bunch here as they were in her own world. Lucy liked Rangers well enough – they had a strict, if private, moral code – but it was hard to predict how any of the rest of them would behave, and therefore easier to avoid the problem. She’d ended up in more than one tight spot before for giving someone of her own kind the benefit of the doubt. While she’d never had a similar problem with hobbits, and this current incident was her only negative encounter with elves, and the dwarves of the Iron Hills had only wronged her by adhering rigidly and blindly to a legal system without wiggle room.  
When it came right down to it, she distrusted all of the free peoples equally. And that, she supposed, made her less racist than those who could trust one group or a few of them wholeheartedly, but not the others. Surprisingly.  
“Where would you have us take you, then?” Legolas asked, brow furrowing at the remark. “If you do not care for your kind, perhaps Rivendell?”  
“No!” Lucy slipped on the steep steps, Legolas catching her swiftly by the elbow. “I mean, no, I have cousins in Laketown. I meant to stay with them a few days, anyway, and catch up with the dwarves again after.” Rivendell was so far away. If Thranduil consented to such an absurd detour for some group of elves acting as glorified babysitters (which seemed unlikely), she’d be so far back the way they’d come that she could never regain the ground in time.  
Legolas let go of Lucy as she regained her feet. “Laketown it is.”

 

Lucy’s news was not met happily. She would have been touched by the outcry that arose, if she didn’t suspect that half of it was just general rage at Thranduil, and not specific to her being removed from the party.  
“He can’t just take you,” Kili protested. “You’re one of us.”  
“Not to a racist elf, I’m not.” Lucy didn’t think there was a word for “racist” in Westron, which was odd because virtually everyone in this world had some strong perception of the differences between free peoples – benevolent or otherwise.  
Whatever the word was, spoken in Lucy’s unfamiliar mother tongue, she said it with enough venom to burn Kili’s ears.  
“Enough,” Thorin called from across the hall. “How would we find you again?”  
“We can hardly advertise that we’ve come to town,” Balin fretted.  
“And I can hardly watch every single port of entry for your arrival,” Lucy agreed. She pressed her forehead to the stone wall, trying to think. “How big is Laketown?”  
“Big enough for even a lass like you to be easily lost,” Dwalin replied. “Thirteen of us, not as easily, but the situation may call for it. There’s no way to know, and if we must keep quiet . . .”  
Lucy knocked her head against the stone, lightly. “When will they take you?” Kili asked, his voice pitched low under the chatter of the other dwarves, now shouting useless, hurried ideas to and fro, arguments breaking out.  
“Tomorrow,” Lucy replied. She moved to her door to grip the cool vertical bars, immovably solid in her hands. “Legolas said tomorrow.”  
There wasn’t much sleep to be found for any of them, that night. The passing of hours felt like days, with so few left to them before Durin’s Day fel, and with Lucy’s involuntary departure on their minds, and Bilbo’s continued absence weighing heavily.  
“I’ll come back,” Lucy said, at some point in the night. “If you can’t get out, and Bilbo doesn’t come. I’ll hike to the mountain and meet Gandalf. He’ll know how to free you.”  
“Gandalf said he would meet us at the overlook on Durin’s Day,” Thorin said bitterly. “It will be too late.”  
“For the door, but not to spare you rotting to death in here,” Lucy said, managing to sound reasonable instead of irritated.  
“Do ye know where the overlook is, lass?” Dwalin asked skeptically.  
“No, but I’ll find it,” she said, setting her jaw even though no one could see, and no one else wanted to argue with her.  
“It must be nearly dawn,” Bofur observed, when it seemed the night was drawing to a close.  
“We’re never going to reach the mountain, are we.” Ori sounded painfully forlorn. It wasn’t even voiced as a question.  
The answer was spoken softly, to avoid the attention of the guards, but they all heard it.  
“Not stuck in here, you’re not.”  
Lucy bumped into her cell door, in her eagerness to look out and see, and there he was, Bilbo Baggins, standing unharmed and smiling with key ring in hand. She laughed in relief and joy, fighting down the louder shout that wanted to sound out.  
He shushed the others who weren’t as scrupulous, reminding them of the guards as he worked at unlocking Thorin’s cell door, trying several keys before he struck upon the right one.  
It wasn’t long before dwarves were milling around on the walkways and stairs, running up and down to greet newly freed friends and relations, glancing one another over for damage. Bilbo grinned at Lucy as he reached her door, and she reached an arm through to grip his shoulder.  
“You really are amazing, Bilbo,” she said. “I thought I knew you well before we started out, but I didn’t, really.”  
“Neither did I,” he admitted, smiling as the lock clicked and the door swung free.  
Kili drew the human into a hug the moment she stepped out of her cell, mindful of her healing back as one arm went around her shoulders, the other low across her hips. Lucy returned the hold with equal strength, surprising a grunt out of Kili that made her laugh.  
“You wouldn’t have let the elves take you, right?” he asked, drawing back to fit his forehead against hers. It was a comfortable fit.  
“Oh, of course not,” Lucy rejoined lightly, and then Ori was at her side, literally jumping for joy, knocking his head against hers with just a touch too much enthusiasm, so she stumbled back a little, blinking rapidly. Those nearest her laughed, Dwalin squeezing the back of her neck in a quick, almost-unnoticed gesture of affection as the Company began hurrying after Bilbo, who was leading them not up, but down, deeper into the underground of the Woodland Realm.  
“Oh, I don’t believe it, we’re in the cellars,” Kili hissed up the line when he saw the huge kegs of wine and the dozing guards.  
“You’re supposed to be leading us out, not further in,” Bofur recriminated in a whisper, shushing Bilbo when the hobbit protested.  
Lucy kept a firm grip on Ori’s mittened hand as they all crept around the edge of the room, sliding out of the elves’ sight behind a huge stack of empty barrels. He would never have held one of his brothers’ hands, unwilling to seem frightened, but could hold Lucy’s without shame, under the guise of comforting her. “In you go,” she murmured when Bilbo hissed for them all to climb into barrels, and he gave her a quick, nervous smile before doing so. Lucy released his hand to clap him on the back before selecting a barrel of her own. She had no idea what the plan was, but didn’t doubt that there was one.  
They were the only ones making any moves to obey Bilbo, the others all conferring quietly between themselves, until Thorin hissed, “Do as he says.”  
For a few moments, all was shuffle and jostling – “Keep your head out, Ori.” – and then Bofur called softly, “What do we do now?”  
“Hold your breath.”  
“Hold my –?”  
More confusion, shouts and splashing and choking on water, before anyone regained their sense enough to grab onto the barrels of their neighbors, others reaching out to brace against the rocks, so they all came to a stop, bobbing in the current of the underground river.  
“Where’s Bilbo?” Ori asked curiously, looking around.  
“I’m sure he’ll be right along,” Lucy said, looking up at the wooden hatch in the stone wall overhead. “He has a plan.”  
And sure enough, the hobbit came sliding down, landing in the icy water with an undignified shout, bobbing up to bump against the barrels. Gloin and Fili reached down, hoisting him up into one of the unoccupied barrels, and they were off again, some choosing to paddle doggedly over the sides of their barrels to hurry their way as elves cried out somewhere in the huge cavern, footsteps sounding on the stone.  
“Throw your weight back!” Lucy shouted when Thorin roared that there was a waterfall ahead, and she did, pitching back in her barrel so it went down bottom-first, keeping it right-side-up and herself seated inside, but she didn’t know who other than Bilbo didn’t hear or didn’t obey, because he was the only one to come up sputtering in the white-churned water at the bottom, Nori struggling to draw the hobbit into his barrel as he clutched at the sides to stay afloat.  
It was a terrifying enough experience even before the familiar tone of an elvish patrol horn rang out behind them.  
“Gate!” Thorin bellowed, and Lucy looked up to see what he meant, a large stone bridge with a metal grate underneath it, one which was ratcheting closed even as the current bore them towards it, and it closed fully just in time for the first to them to slam into it, barrels thunking hollowly against one another as they began to pile up.  
One of the elves standing guard atop the structure dropped, an arrow sprouting from his neck, and it took a split second for the image to make any sense – just long enough for the orc to appear on the battlement, snarling. Lucy’s heart seemed to stop, clenching painfully in her chest. She had the very few weapons still hidden in her jerkin, and none of them would stand up to an axe or a sword or a pike. Even her vambraces and knuckle-dusters were of little use, though she’d retained them, because she couldn’t deflect blows properly when bobbing in a barrel.  
Orcs swarmed over the riverbanks like ants, out of nowhere, elves falling back, injured, or lunging forward, crying out for reinforcements that were already pouring forth to chase the Company.  
“Get under the bridge!” Thorin roared, grabbing at the barrels of those nearest to give. “Under the bridge!” His thinking was obvious – there were too many arrows, pikes, and spears flying for any of them to be safe. Thhere was only so much room under the bridge, though, enough for perhaps half the barrels. Bilbo managed to kill the first orc that approached them, the body falling forward to bob in the water along with them, Dwalin killing the second with just his elbow in its face and wrestling its sword from a hand that hadn’t yet figured out that it was dead, and should release its grip.  
Lucy slid one of the long, thin knives from the boning of her jerkin, aiming for eyes, ears, and throats, the length of it quickly growing black and slick with orc blood. She cast around wildly to see who else needed a weapon and spotted Kili as he ran up the steps of the bridge, dispatching an orc in five or six brutally efficient moves, even with one of their crude black iron swords as his weapon. Lucy had a split second to think that whoever told him he wasn’t as good a fighter as Fili was clearly deranged before a nearby snarl grabbed her attention and she wheeled, ungainly in the uneven, shifting barrel, to sink her knife through the ear canal of an orc as it reached for Bifur, forcing the weapon through a thin layer of crackling bone and into the brain.  
Kili threw aside the last orc between himself and the lever that would (hopefully) open the gate below. Sudden, sharp pain lanced up his leg, severe and shocking enough to stop him in his tracks, blinking.  
“Kili!” Fili screamed, and Lucy looked, watching the younger prince stumble two unsteady steps to grasp at the wooden lever to open the gate, one hand moving to the arrow in his knee, and he fell, gripping the muscle just above the wound as pain like a snakebite radiated from it, burning bright enough to make him gasp.  
The orc running for the vulnerable dwarf went down with Lucy’ knife in its eye, and the orc reaching for Lucy went down with Fili’s sword through its back. Their eyes met for an instant before the clamor all around them demanded attention again.  
Kili drew himself together enough to clamber after the lever again, dragging himself up on a stone step and lunging up for it, hooking an elbow over the wooden handle so it bore his weight as he fell, grunting in pain. It was enough, the gate below swinging open as his head cracked against the flat stone, not painfully. Thorin always said he had a thick head.  
“Kili!” Fili yelled again. He and Lucy grasped the edges of a third, empty barrel between them, their other hands braced against the rock. “Drop!”  
He did, groaning as he rolled twice, throwing himself off the bridge to land, awkwardly and painfully, in the barrel. The bolt of pain from his leg as the arrow snapped off on the barrel’s edge made his vision go white.  
“Come on, Kee, lean back,” Lucy ordered quickly, and he could hear the fear running under her voice. He struggled to obey, shifting around so he wouldn’t turn over in the waterfall, and then she and Fili let go, and they all raced over the edge.  
It was all a blur after that, white water and barrels keening dangerously far to one side, shouted orders in Black Speech that were easily ignored – faster, after them, get the elf, hurry. The orcs jumped from the riverbanks to hit barrels, or fell in the water, so they seemed to crop up randomly in the churning bubbles. Lucy couldn’t kill them all – some left her barrel with only broken fingers to break their grip on her vessel, gushing blood from a nose smashed against her skull, or bleeding from the patch of skin where they used to have an ear attached.  
The current finally evened out and slowed, and the orcs stopped coming. Those that were already floating along with them were easily dispatched. They seemed to have passed the borders of the Woodland Realm, because they were no longer pursued by elves, either.  
Thorin began to shout back questions and orders, confirming that they were no longer pursued, ascertaining that they hadn’t lost anyone, and saying to make for the shore now that they’d lost the current. At the last, Lucy overturned her barrel to swim, since she’d quickly grown to hate the stupid thing. The dwarves followed her more slowly, bobbing awkwardly as they paddled with their arms or whatever branches were floating in grabbing distance.  
She was already wringing out her braid when the first of them made it into the shallows – Nori, who she helped regain his feet. He went slogging up the rocky shoal, muttering about barrels and seasickness. Next was Thorin, who overturned awkwardly but brushed away her helping hands, struggling to his feet in the knee-deep water and wading out after Nori.  
“Don’t dwarves swim?” she asked Dwalin, amused, as he clumsily maneuvered his barrel into her reach.  
“Nay, lass, too heavy,” he grunted, clambering out. “We’ve got rock in our very bones.” He stayed beside Lucy to help get the others out, and in short order everyone was on land.  
Lucy looked for Kili in time to see him drop to his knees, groaning through gritted teeth, and she ran up the sloping rock to reach him as quickly as she could while fully waterlogged. Bofur made it first, squinting at the prince in concern as he swiped at the wound with a handkerchief that was just as soaked in dirty river water as his wound. “I’m fine, it’s nothing,” he lied, edging up onto a rock to sit.  
“Shut up,” Lucy said, sinking to her knees to get a close look. “The arrowhead’s still lodged in the muscle – stop that!” She yanked the rag from his hand and threw it aside.  
“Is it bad?” Fili asked anxiously, gripping Lucy’s shoulder as he leaned down to get a look, too.  
“It’s fine,” Kili repeated, but his hand, gripping his thigh just above the wound, was white-knuckled.  
“On your feet,” Thorin ordered over the grumbles and moans of complaint from various members of the Company who now sported scrapes and bruises to a one.  
“Kili’s wounded,” Fili reported, turning. “His leg needs binding.”  
“There’s an orc pack on our tail,” Thorin retorted, glancing back upstream. “We keep moving.”  
“Did we say it wants binding or it needs binding?” Lucy snapped, spinning on the balls of her feet without rising from her crouch, her boots grinding the pebbles. Thorin glared at her, Fili’s grip on her shoulder tightening in support or warning, but the dwarf king relented.  
“Five minutes,” he ruled. “Then we move.”  
“To where?” Balin demanded as Lucy got to work.  
“To the mountain,” Bilbo said, sniffing past the water that dripped from his nose. “We’re so close.”  
Lucy gave the ensuing discussion of how to cross the lake or enter the town half an ear, favoring the task of binding Kili’s leg with the majority of her attention, though she was perfectly capable of both listening and working.  
There was nothing on hand to bind with, so she rose, jerking apart the laces of her jerkin and shrugging out of it. “What are you doing?” Kili asked, blinking water out of his eyes as he looked up at her.  
“Getting bandages,” Lucy said, stripping her shirt off over her head (as swiftly as possible, in the way she’d learned spared all the pain that could be spared, but red spears of pain still ripped at her). Bilbo broke off mid-sentence as he blushed, but Lucy’s whole torso was still bound up in bandages for her back, easily within the bounds of modesty. She shoved the shirt into Fili’s hands to pull her jerkin back on, and he began cutting it into long strips with one of her no-longer-secret knives as she did up the laces, yanking a little too hard because her back was smarting like a smacked second-degree sunburn and her hands were shaking a little from that and the orcs.  
Fili gave the hastily wrung-out bandages to Lucy as she knelt again, and she threw them over her shoulder as she got one of the long, thin knives into her hands. “Steady on,” she warned, and then the knife flashed, making two lightning-fast incisions that still wrung an agonized cry from Kili’s lungs as his back and neck arched like he’d been struck with a whip.  
“What are you cutting him more for?” Bofur cried, but Lucy ignored him. The orc arrowhead was barbed – it would never have come out if the wound hadn’t been widened. Instead it would have festered.  
Fili, gripping Kili’s shoulders tightly for support, watched Lucy’s pale face, lips flattened into a line, as she folded several of the shirt-strips into a thick pad to protect the wound from further trauma, lashing it down with fierce efficiency, the tension in her arm never wavering, so that the bandage went down flat and smooth, snug enough to stop the bleeding but not tight enough to disrupt circulation to the point of damage. Every movement was spare, quick, practiced. She really was a healer, then. And there were few common-born humans who could boldly face down one of Thorin’s glares while soaking wet and defenseless. Kili glanced up at his brother and then at the human, and Fili nodded in agreement. He was beginning to see why his younger brother cared for her.  
Both of them were so focused on watching Lucy knot off the crude binding that it took them a moment to notice the human archer not ten yards away, his arrow trained on Ori. Dwalin lunged in between the two, a tree branch held up as a weapon, and it took the arrow meant for his heart, the archer already whirling, his next arrow striking the rock from Kili’s raised hand.  
“Do it again, and you’re dead,” he warned, eyes on Lucy. She had a hand in her jerkin, but there was nothing left fit for throwing – two long, pin-like knives, all the rest confiscated or spent. Her fingers had reached for projectiles and found the leather slots for them empty, and she withdrew her hand slowly, raising it to show that she was unarmed. Kili put a hand on her shoulder, squeezing, but she didn’t dare turn to look up at his face. His hand was warm through the chill of her own wet skin.  
“Excuse me,” Balin said, easing forward, “but you’re from Laketown, if I’m not mistaken. That barge over there – it wouldn’t be available for hire, by any chance?”  
The archer let the tension out of his bowstring. His gaze raked over them – unarmed, dripping wet, half of them old enough to sport white or gray hair, one clearly wounded, and Lucy shirtless under her jerkin. They clearly weren’t a threat. They also clearly could not pay him. “That would depend on the job,” he said shortly, and walked past them to begin collecting the barrels. “Get out of my way.”  
Kili’s grip relaxed, and he realized he was touching Lucy’s bare skin – smooth and warm under his fingers, lightly freckled. She turned slightly to look up at him, questioning, and he realized he’d grabbed onto her and not Fili, who was just as close to him. “Come on,” the older prince said, slapping his brother on the back and reaching a hand down to Lucy, who grabbed it and allowed herself to be pulled to her feet.  
They followed the bargeman to his vessel, and watched him roll the barrels aboard one by one as Balin extended a series of pleasantries, slightly cautious, clearly hoping to get them a ride into town. Lucy found herself standing between Kili and Ori, as was somewhat usual, and helped Ori wring out some of his waterlogged knit clothing as Balin talked, until Dwalin interrupted and the bargeman demanded to know their business in the area.  
Balin stepped in again. “We are simple merchants from the Blue Mountains, journeying to see our kin in the Island Hills.”  
The bargeman cut his eyes pointedly at Lucy, although he’d previously ignored her. “Simple merchants, you say,” he repeated, clearly amused.  
“We need food, supplies, weapons,” Thorin cut in. “Can you help us?”  
The man rubbed his fingers over the fresh white scars orc and elf arrows had left in the barrels’ sides. “I know where these came from,” he informed them. “I don’t know what business you had with the elves, but I don’t think it ended well.” He took in the surprised looks. “No one enters the town but by leave of the Master. He makes his wealth through trade with the Woodland elves. He would see you in irons before risking the wrath of King Thranduil.”  
“I’ll wager there are ways to enter that town unseen,” Balin said quickly, at a look from Thorin.  
“Aye, but for that you’d need a smuggler.”  
“For which we would pay,” Balin said even more quickly. “Double.”  
And they were all aboard in short order.

 

They journeyed north, over the course of the day, fog rolling in as they moved farther across the water. The air grew steadily chiller, and by noon, Lucy was surprised to glance overboard and see ice in the water.  
“We lie in the shadow of the Mountain, here,” the bargeman explained. He had given no name – wise, for a smuggler. “The ice rarely melts.”  
Stone pillars, many still sporting buttresses, swam forward out of the mist, remnants of a grander age of Esgaroth. The bargeman wove around them, unsettlingly close on more than one occasion.  
“Oh, I’ve had enough of this lippy lake-man,” Dwalin grumbled, after the bargeman had met Thorin’s accusation of drowning them all a little too smartly. “I say we throw him overboard and be done with him.”  
“Oh, Bard, his name’s Bard,” Bilbo fussed.  
“How do you know?” Bofur inquired.  
“Ah, I asked him.”  
Lucy shook her head, smiling at the persistent good manners of hobbits even as she shivered. They all shivered, to some extent, but even in the humid air over the lake, most of their clothes were half-dried by now. Wrapped in several layers of waterlogged bandages, Lucy was the exception. Water leaked from under her jerkin in rivulets whenever she shifted her weight. Kili put an arm around her shoulders, worried about the bare skin in the biting air, and she gratefully slumped down to fit better against his side, tucking her arms more snugly around herself.  
“I don’t care what he calls himself, I don’t like him,” Gloin grumbled.  
“We don’t have to like him,” Balin said sensibly, stacking coins. “We simply have to pay him. Come on, now, lads. Turn out your pockets.”  
Everyone did, though most of their loose change had been long lost to various of the Quest’s catastrophes, and Balin did a quick count. “We’re ten coins short,” he fretted.  
Kili glanced down at Lucy’s sigh, surprised to feel her shrugging off the warmth of his arm. She forced herself to sit upright again; her fingers fumbled the laces at the back of her jerkin, stiff with cold, but the bow still unraveled, and she drew the garment off, drawing one of the last two knives as she flipped the jerkin inside out, picking carefully at a series of odd little stitches along one of the hems. Kili frowned at it, glancing over her head to shrug at the questioning look Fili gave him. The others exchanged similar looks, confused, except for Nori, who was nodding with grim approval on his face. He knew this trick, too.  
The stitches came apart, and with them, a long strip of leather, hidden right along the thick seam where two of the jerkin’s panels met. Sewn into the back of that were coins, glinting in the dim light that came through the dense fog.  
Kili marveled that she’d managed to be as swift and light of foot as she had been for the duration of the quest, weighted down by metal as she had been. It was a great deal, for a human. Stars, throwing knives, pin-like knives, steel plates to guard against injury, coins . . .  
Lucy cut them free carefully, adding them to Balin’s meticulous piles, counting. “. . . eight, nine, ten,” she said, and put down another. “And one for luck.” Seeing surprised faces, she shrugged. “To insure proper service, then.”  
“Are you out of secrets, yet?” Kili asked, amazed. He wasn’t the only one.  
“Not yet,” Lucy said, sheathing the knife and drawing the cold, stiff, wet leather back over her head. She’d be lucky if the thing survived this maltreatment. “Just about.”  
She moved to settle down beside him again, but Kili drew away, ignoring the sparks of pain that ricocheted up his leg with any and every movement to shrug out of his outer tunic, handing it to Lucy, who blinked in surprise even as her fingers wound into the cloth, finding it damp but warm.  
No one else even noticed, and the pair looked up to follow the silent, stunned gazes, rising and turning to see the Lonely Mountain, finally visible through the fog, the culmination of their arduous journey.  
Bard interrupted the moment, striding towards them. “The money, quick,” he said. “Give it to me.”  
“We will pay you when we receive our provisions, and not before,” Thorin replied stonily.  
“If you value your freedom, you’ll do as I say,” Bard said, glancing up. “There are guards ahead.”  
They paid, of course, and clambered into the barrels at Bard’s order, with much less argument than Lucy expected from her cantankerous companions.  
There were several tense moments as Bilbo reported Bard’s movements, seen from a knothole in his barrel of residence, but it only ended in fish raining down from above. Shocking and unpleasant, but not terrible. Lucy covered her head with her arms and resigned herself to a cold, clammy, smelly trip into town. At least the fish were fresh, and hadn’t worked up a very powerful odor yet. They mostly just smelled like brine.  
There were several painfully tense moments at the tollgate, when Gloin and Ori’s barrels were tipped over the side, but nothing came of it, and they were finally, (more or less) safely in Laketown. It was several more minutes, however, before Bard announced that they could get out of the barrels, by which time they were all so eager for fresh air that they burst out of the fish like spring flowers through soil, most of them sputtering to get fishy water out of their mouths.  
Things seemed to be going smoothly again, though, as Bard guided them deftly through the town’s byways (which bobbed alarmingly underfoot), at least until the bargeman was waylaid by his son, a boy of about fourteen, who bore the convenient news that their house was being watched.  
It might have been easier, Lucy reflected, if I’d just let the elves bring me.  
Bard turned, his eyes moving quickly over their surroundings as he thought. “Into the water with you,” he decided, catching the nearest dwarf – Dori – by the shoulder.  
“What?” The merchant bristled.  
“Our house is at the end of its row,” Bard said. “The row is at the end of this walkway. If you do not wish to be seen, and shortly thereafter arrested, the water is the only way.”  
“We can’t swim,” Dori sputtered.  
Bard gave them all a calculating look. “I can swim,” Lucy offered, and he nodded.  
“You lead, then,” he said. “The rest of you, grip the undersides of the walkways to draw yourselves along. When you come to a round opening in the middle of a square construction under the last house, stop, and wait for a knock.”  
Lucy dropped into a crouch, pausing to glance up at Bard. “Hurry,” she suggested. “The water’s cold.”  
And without another word to anyone, or any visible hesitation, she slipped over the edge of the water-slick walkway and into the icy water. Kili wasn’t the only one who lunged forward in alarm, as it was deeply ingrained in dwarves, from birth, to avoid deep water.  
There was no splash, only a few silvery bubbles.  
“After her, then,” Bard said, and clapped his son on the shoulder, drawing him into the nearby shop.  
There was nothing for it but to follow Lucy. Dwalin crouched to put a hand in the water first, which Lucy, Bard, or anyone else used to cold environments could have told him was a mistake. He yanked his hand back like it’d been burned. “That’ll kill us,” he protested. “The bargeman’s mad!”  
“Lucy did it,” Bilbo said reasonably, just as there was an impatient rap against the wood underfoot, making them all jump, and they entered the water quickly – some jumping, some sitting down to first dangle their legs, all miserable.  
Lucy was beginning to feel warm by the time all thirteen dwarves and Bilbo had joined her – the first few moments were agony, of course, pain like a thousand splinters of ice in her skin and muscles and very bones, lancing at her heart and squeezing the air from her lungs in a vice, but then a small kernel of heat had ignited in her chest and spread. She allowed a few moments for the dwarves to undergo the same experience (gasping and cursing and groaning all the while) before she began to swim forward. The walkways were not flush with the waterline – such an arrangement would have caused water to flood the walkway every time someone stepped down or the like – but rose about two feet above it, and the great floating beams that permitted this arrangement created a space of about eighteen inches between the water and the underside of the walkway. It was dim, and dank with the smell of moldy wood, and bitterly cold.  
“Durin’s beard,” Dwalin growled as he grabbed onto the vertical poles of wood reinforcing the horizontal beams every foot or so, “if that knock takes longer than a moment to come, I’ll kill every member of the town guard just to get out of this damned water.”  
“It-t-t’s n-not s-s-s-s-so bad-d-d,” Lucy said, but wasn’t very convincing, because her teeth were chattering violently and it made her stutter. “Her-re’s the end-d-d already-dy.” She followed the corner of the walkway to the left and led the painfully slow way to the dead end, where a circle of light from above fell on the water before her, as promised.  
“Is that a t-t-t-t-toilet?” Bilbo cried from behind Dwalin.  
“I hop-p-pe to M-Mary it’s n-not,” Lucy said, since she and Kili both had open wounds – hell, at this point, they all did, even if everyone else had but scrapes and scratches.  
The promised knocked came only a moment later. Lucy gestured for Dwalin to go first, looking back so she could count people as they passed. If they’d lost anyone, she was the only one who could swim or dive for a rescue, although she wasn’t sure she could drag a dwarf back to the surface if they were so heavy they didn’t float in the first place.  
She heard Dwalin’s growled threat to whoever was above and let out a shaky, uneven laugh as she let the others by. Traumatized-looking Bilbo, Nori, Kili, Fili, Dori, Bifur . . .  
When everyone was accounted for, she accepted a much-needed hand up from Bard’s son. She’d swam in cold water before, but never this cold, and not when she was exhausted and injured and much thinner than usual, so the warmth her body had been able to work up was brief.  
Bard and his children set to doling out spare clothes that were sure to be a bad fit – a ridiculous fit, Lucy soon found, hiding her amusement behind her mug of tea, given to her by a child who hurried around with a tray and a teapot. Thorin’s scowl looked much better when he was wearing a clownishly large shirt whose sleeves swallowed his hands entirely.  
It reminded Lucy that she was wearing Kili’s tunic, something which the king doubtless would not take kindly if he noticed. She shucked it off furtively, under her blanket, passing it into Kili’s lap. He looked down, startled. “Thanks,” she said quietly. “Not good if your uncle saw, though.” The prince nodded, quickly draping the soggy garment over the back of his chair to dry. “How’s your leg?”  
“Fine,” he said. Lucy gripped the muscle experimentally, not hard, and he hid his flinch at the surprisingly sharp pain so she would leave her hand there for a moment, warm and sure.  
Oin approached, rubbing his hands together, and Lucy quickly removed her hand from Kili’s thigh. “Alright, lass,” he said briskly. “Let’s see that back.”  
Lucy bit back a groan. She’d hoped she could avoid notice and slip away, inspect her wounds by touch in the scant privacy of the toilet-shack downstairs (cold though it was).  
“No arguments,” Oin added firmly, seeing her grimace.  
Reluctantly, Lucy rose, dropping the blanket and working out of her jerkin in short order. There was virtually no privacy to be afforded by the small, cramped home, which was entirely one room, the sleeping area partitioned off by a heavy curtain. The dwarves, by and large, didn’t even notice, so used to ad hoc medical exams that it didn’t garner any attention.  
The pale, wintry sunlight looked like silver gilt on Lucy’s cold-pale skin, and Kili had a harder time looking away than he should have – even though there was no need for it, as Lucy was, by now, an expert at keeping the important things deftly and completely covered. She resumed her seat more or less bare from the waist up, Bard’s older daughter (Sigrid, if Lucy had caught the names correctly in all the hubbub) blushing as the younger looked on with interest. “I’ll get you something of mine,” Sigrid said, hurrying away.  
The younger child had moved closer before Lucy noticed her and could warn her away, distracted as she was by the cold, wet, pain, and embarrassment. She wasn’t ashamed of her semi-nudity, but of her various scars, and of needing someone else to look after her, all of which was less important when the girl gasped, “What happened?”  
“Don’t ask that, Tilda,” Sigrid scolded, returning with a bundle of clothes. “Here – I’m sorry I only have dresses.”  
Lucy nodded thanks, unable to accept with her arms held over her chest, and Kili quickly reached past her to take the bundle for her.  
“What’s this white stuff?” Oin fretted, poking at some of the spider silk.  
“Silk. Waterproof. Leave it,” Lucy said, hunching forward so her elbows rested on her knees, guarding her bare front.  
“It – it looks bad,” fretted Sigrid.  
Dwalin glanced over despite himself at the words, and was relieved to see the wounds clear of infection and half-healed – the healing of about six weeks condensed into two or so through the use of Elvish medicine. “It’s fine,” he said gruffly.  
“I’ll get our salve,” Sigrid said anyway, hurrying off with her sister in tow.  
“Oin!” Bofur called from across the room. “Bilbo won’t stop shaking!”  
The healer heaved himself to his feet. “You know the routine by now,” he said to Dwalin, who nodded, and he hurried off, leaving Lucy, Kili, and Dwalin in the corner. Kili sipped his tea, feeling out of place, but not wanting to draw attention to himself by moving away, and not wanting to move away in case Lucy wanted him there. She had before, although there was no sign she did now; she was gazing at the floor, pale and thin-lipped, shaking from the cold.  
She was also thinking that anyone who cared to look over could see more than just her current injuries – the old scars, the ugly ones, the pitiful ones.  
The old warrior saw the defeated curve of Lucy’s spine, the way her head hung, and he gripped her shoulder above the highest of the marks. “They will leave good scars,” he assured her gravely.  
Her laugh was harsh and surprising. Kili spilled tea over himself at the sound. “Good scars,” Lucy repeated, hunkering even lower over her lap.  
“Warrior’s scars,” Dwalin said, frowning. “Ye should have them tattooed.”  
“Warrior’s scars are earned in combat, bravely,” Lucy retorted, a sharp edge to her voice. “Not crying and screaming underground.”  
Kili stared at her cold, drawn face, feeling the protest like a punch in the stomach. Did she think that? That sacrifice had been the bravest thing he’d ever seen – a terrible honor to bear witness to, but a great one. He couldn’t say so, though; the intensity of the words blocked his throat.  
“Warrior’s scars are earned protecting others, and ye protected Ori,” Dwalin growled, his tone broking no argument. “Ye should be proud. They tell of yer bravery.”  
Lucy bit down on another unhappy laugh. “They tell that I wasn’t strong, or fast, or clever, or skilled enough,” she said over her shoulder, wet braid sliding against her neck like a cold hand. “They tell that I was brought low, and many times. That is not what I see, or what you see – perhaps not what any dwarf sees – but that it what most humans would see, if they cared to think about it beyond the appearance of the scars, which most won’t, and the appearance is ugly. No one wants to touch them, believe me, or even look at them if they can help it.”  
“That’s madness,” Dwalin said, his voice low and firm – the voice of reason, which Kili remembered from his childhood, when he’d gone a little too wild or thrown an irrational tantrum. “Everyone has scars, lass.”  
“Not like mine,” Lucy rebutted, and that was impossible to argue with. “They also say that I’m odd. I’ve more scars than most sell-swords, you know, and I’m a woman, and young, and I should never have had cause to travel far or wide, or become so marked. They say I’m dangerous, which I only want to seem sometimes, and those times rarely fall when I’m without my clothes. They say I’m strange, and a risk, and unsafe, and damaged, and not worth the time it would take to know me.”  
The diatribe was dismaying – Kili was astounded Lucy was saying any of it, reserved as she usually was, except that he understood how difficult it could be to stop confessing once you started.  
There was no way to grip her arm or her knee, the way she was sitting, so Kili gripped the back of her neck, drawing her gaze. She was shaking from the cold, still, eyes more pupil than iris. “It may be that way with most of your kind, but those people are not worth your time.”  
Her eyes were distant. “That’s easy for you to say,” she replied. “You’ve never been alone.”  
And that one hit him right in the heart, because she was right, and he couldn’t imagine any worse thing than being alone, except being alone and unwanted. Kili slid onto the floor without thinking, ignoring his wound, so he could press his forehead to hers, his fingers sliding from her neck into her hair. Anything he could have said would have sounded empty, insincere, so all he did was sit on the floor, hopeful that his touch was comforting because she didn’t shrug it off. Dwalin silently accepted a small crock of healing salve from Bard’s daughter and got to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note for those who do not fully understand Lucy's scar-rant or feelings, particularly those who are not in possession of many scars, themselves:  
> Lucy is of several minds regarding her scars - those that she earned by accident, or in honest combat, she doesn't really mind.  
> Those that were inflicted upon her, she despises. I know from personal experience that having a physical scar to remind you of emotional trauma, neither of which will probably ever go away, only adds some oomph to the whole painful experience.  
> Lucy has the added bonus of being more or less self-reliant since she was about ten years old, so scars that were inflicted upon her are also viewed, by her, as a personal failing (not clever or strong or skilled enough, for instance, as she said).  
> Additionally, as a young woman with a decent number of scars of varying origin, I personally know that far too often, others have less-than-considerate reactions - from lovers to friends to random strangers at the beach who don't think my skin is appropriate for display to the general public. I feel that most girls and women who dare to have flawed skin probably share that experience on some scale, so I extended the same to Lucy.  
> Even if you like most of your scars, like I do, I've found among others like myself that it's not uncommon to hate for others to see them. It creates a very weird internal dichotomy.  
> (The view of women's bodies in Western culture is really problematic in more ways than just the weight-and-shape aspect, but that's a whole other kettle of fish and I recognize that this is not my social action blog. Sorry if I bored or bothered you.)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The stay in Laketown and the awakening of Smaug.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: oral sex, injured participants, some mention of preexisting injuries.
> 
> Also some background shipping, because I apparently can't help myself.
> 
> Sorry the update took longer than usual. I work at a wildly understaffed restaurant, and I just worked the four busiest days of the week in a row, in nine or ten hour shifts. Yesterday, I worked eleven of twenty-four hours; I was literally only out of the building for about twelve hours (extra hour was spent driving to and from work, struggling with the ancient timeclock, and sitting in the walk-in with wet hair to wake up enough to drive safely), so hopefully anyone who has become impatient with me can understand the delay.

Thorin and Balin spotted the windlance outside just as Lucy got into her borrowed dress, and she listened in with interest as she worked her soaked trousers off underneath, hanging them near the fire to dry with all the other wet things. She approached the window to look for herself, carefully knotting the dress’s tie at the small of her back as she did. The story of the dragon’s first attack on the lake, while terrible, was a welcome distraction. Lucy wasn’t much one for pity (from herself or others), bitterness, or even telling her troubles – she had acted out of character, from cold or whatever else, and she felt sheepish. She’d always been one for telling the truth when possible, though, and at least she’d done that.  
The bitter, self-pitying truth, and to Dwalin, whom she respected enough to want respect in return, and to Kili, whom she liked immensely.  
Their host spoke into the glum silence following Thorin’s reminiscing, drawing the king’s attention, and in turn, the dwarf reminded Bard that some of the money they’d paid him had been for weapons.  
He hurried out to fetch them, and Lucy gazed out the window at the windlance, wondering if its use would soon be necessary, or if they could kill the dragon without waking it. Or maybe the dragon really was gone, although she’d never put much hope in good luck.  
She was surprised to feel a blanket fall over her shoulders, even though her hands automatically rose to draw it closer. She was still half-frozen, her fingers and toes stiff, her braid like an icicle down her spine.  
“Thanks,” she told Bifur, who nodded. He also signed to her, adamantly, Good scars. “Thanks,” she repeated, trying not to sigh. She’d meant what she’d said, but that didn’t mean it needed saying.  
Beaming, the toymaker clapped her on the uninjured area of her shoulder and moved away again, and Lucy tuned into the heated conversation between Thorin and the Lin brothers.  
“We have but a week until Durin’s Day falls,” Balin said urgently. “We must reach the Mountain before then.”  
“That should be ample time,” Dwalin said, arms crossed over his broad chest.  
“Even with injured among us?” Thorin asked, glancing at Lucy, obvious and shameless in her semi-eavesdropping.  
“I’m good to climb,” she said flatly.  
“We’ll make it,” Dwalin repeated.  
“And if we do not? If we fail to find the hidden door in time?” Kili scowled slightly, made uncharacteristically grim by the approaching deadline, and the burning sensation still radiating from his leg wound.  
“Then this Quest has been for nothing,” Fili said grimly.  
The bleak discussion was thankfully ended by Bard’s return. He shouldered between the dwarves and dropped a dripping roll of black oil cloth onto his kitchen table. It reeked of fish, and unrolled to reveal the sort of cobbled-together weapons one found in the hands of an oppressed rebellion composed of farmers and fisherman. Which was, doubtless, exactly the case.  
The metal parts of the jerry-rigged tools weren’t good quality; Lucy could see that, and she didn’t have a lifetime of training in a forge. Even Bilbo looked on with nose wrinkled, although that could have been the smell.  
A moment passed in silence as the shoddy weapons were taken up and passed around for inspection. “Heavy in hand, I admit, but better in defense of your life than none,” Bard said in reply to the few questions, and ample angry looks.  
“Only just,” Lucy said, frowning at the pile. There was nothing in there that she could use – lucky, then, that Bilbo had kept his own sword, for he surely couldn’t lift a thing from that table.  
There was a quick rumble of angry agreement, but Bard spoke over them all. “You won’t find better outside of the city armory!”  
Balin, always the diplomat, suggested they take the meager munitions and go, but Bard was quick to shut that down, too. Lucy began to feel on edge even before he told them about the spies, but she was sidetracked by Kili, who was sinking onto the window seat even as he leaned on the hammer in his hands for support, his face knotted.  
And she suddenly realized, with horror, that she hadn’t checked the arrowhead. It had all happened so quickly – excising the projectile, field-dressing the wound, Bard drawing on them, firing an arrow at Dwalin and Ori, shooting the rock from Kili’s hand, and she had hurried after him with the rest, when Bard turned for his boat, attention on Kili in case he stumbled.  
Her fingertips worked together, trying to remember the shape of the arrowhead. It had been black, of course, all orc weaponry was – they forged too crudely and hastily to produce anything but black iron. Black told her nothing. That the arrow was barbed told her little more, only that the archer wanted to arrow to hurt particularly badly, or wanted it to remain in the wound. Why would an orc want an arrow to remain in a wound? To cause festering . . . she thought back to her stay in Imladris, six years ago . . . sometimes, rarely, the healers had frowned over the injuries, had murmured of poison on the blades, seeping into the blood.  
Lucy stared at Kili, feeling the chill sink into her bones again, and he recovered himself enough to notice. “What?” he asked, offering a smile. “I’m fine.”  
“No, you’re not.” Lucy spun, grabbing the boy (Dain? Bain?) by his shirt collar. He looked up with round eyes. “I need –” What was it called, she couldn’t remember the Westron – “Athelas.”  
The boy’s brow furrowed. “What?”  
“Kingsfoil,” Ori said curiously. He had a decent grasp of several languages, working as a scribe. “What do you need it for?”  
Lucy opened her mouth to answer, caught Kili’s quick shake of his head. “Just in case,” she said, and pressed one of her last coins into the boy’s hand. “Off you go.”  
“To the apothecary?” he said, bewildered.  
“The daymarket,” Sigrid corrected, frowning. “It’s a weed. Pig feed.”  
“Go,” Lucy said, giving Dain or Bain or whoever he was a gentle push. “Many thanks.”  
Bard watched the interaction with a frown, but made no move to stop his son when the boy gave him a questioning look. Lucy moved to sit beside Kili, leaning against him because she was tired and feeling cold again. “What do you want with a weed?” he asked, curious.  
“I lived with the elves awhile,” Lucy said, fighting a yawn. Others were surrendering to the impulse, Oin and Thorin suggesting that they all sleep for the remainder of the day, if they couldn’t move until nightfall. “I’ve seen things.”  
And he didn’t doubt that for a moment.

 

Almost everyone was asleep when Bain returned, even Tilda dozing among their unusual guests, but he cautiously woke Lucy. The urgency on her face went she sent him out made him think she’d want the weed as soon as possible. Whatever she wanted it for.  
She blinked awake blearily, and then jerked into wakefulness. Kingsfoil. Orc poison. Kili’s leg.  
He was lucky she’d gotten the arrowhead out within an hour or so of it landing. Otherwise it could have gone on poisoning him, slowly, for however long it needed to do its work.  
Letting him sleep, Lucy quietly navigated the crowded room, moving into the kitchen area. Bard’s children all watched her closely and curiously as she worked, thinking back to the hushed, gentle voices of elves in the hall of healing, trying to remember the motions of cool, steady hands, the instructions murmured to her in another language.  
She helped herself a pot, a paring knife, water, garlic, and salt. The water she poured into the pot and set to boil on the stove, waiting until it was bubbling noisily before she told Bain to turn over his father’s hourglass. While she waited for half an hour to elapse (to kill any pathogens in the lake water – a real concern, if everyone used it as a toilet), she minced and then made a paste of the garlic. Once the water was clean, she added a generous handful of salt, which quickly dissolved, and then she took it off the stove. She let it cool to lukewarm before she added the garlic paste and shredded kingsfoil, sure that all of the juice of both went into the mix, and wasn’t lost.  
“What on Earth are you making?” Tilda asked, grimacing at the concoction, even if it had a fresh, green smell.  
“Nothing you have to eat,” Lucy replied, smiling at her. The girl’s curiosity persisted through the time Lucy allowed the poultice to set up, although her siblings lost interest and found chores to occupy themselves. Bard was absent without explanation, which Lucy found to be poor parental form considering the fifteen criminally inclined strangers in his house, even if they were asleep.  
Kili awoke at Lucy’s touch mumbling something in Khuzdul, quickly quieting to avoid waking anyone else as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Tilda settled onto the window seat beside him to watch the proceedings, pleased when neither he nor Lucy prompted her to move.  
The prince bit the inside of his cheek as Lucy cut through the shirt-bandages and peeled off the fabric that felt like it had matted to his flesh.  
“How long did you live with the Elves?” he asked, softly, as she inspected the wound, hoping for a distraction. Tilda sat forward keenly, eyes bright.  
“Almost a year,” Lucy said. It seemed impossible, now, that she’d sat in one place for ten months, but she had. That was in the beginning, when Elrond and Gandalf had been so sure that Galadriel and Celeborn would know what to do, when this world still terrified her, but she was also still optimistic. “I was assistant to a human physician when I was younger, remember, and then when I started wandering I stayed in Rivendell awhile, and I worked a lot with their healers.”  
She’d gotten her GED at sixteen, racked up credits at the university with wild determination, switching from linguistics to premed halfway through and entering medical school at the precocious age of nineteen. Any of her peers who’d thought she would be easily discouraged, swayed, or messed with, had quickly learned otherwise.  
“How old were you, when you were the physician’s apprentice?” Kili asked, curious even as waves of pain rippled up from the wound as Lucy cleaned it out with white liquor.  
“Nineteen.”  
His brows rose. “Almost as daft as Ori, then. Too young for that kind of dedication.”  
Lucy snorted softly. Ori was far too young for a mastery, but he pursued one nonetheless. His passion for books, language, and writing was obvious. It had been a kind of slow-burning panic that fueled Lucy’s academic drive, though.  
“Not mad,” Lucy corrected. “Creature of habit. I started working young, not much older than Bard’s son.” She’d dropped out of high school at fifteen, her mother’s signature on the papers barely legible. She’d worked in a gym, whose proprietor and manager paid her what he could, ignored her age, and let her take martial arts classes on the house. “By the time my grandparents took us in, I couldn’t break the habit of hard work, but they didn’t want me to labor, so they took me to the university. I couldn’t believe that I was allowed to read and write all day.” She’d read voraciously, during that period, and not lightly – Dante and Cicero, Plutarch and Aristotle, Shakespeare and Poe and Faulkner and Steinbeck and anyone else whose works she could get her hands on. Peter had read what she did as soon as she’d finished, the books passing out of her hands and into his, and they discussed the literature for hours on end, sometimes into the early hours of morning. Peter’s unmitigated passion for reading had grown instead of paled or wavered, and he found work as a librarian after school and on weekends by the time he was fifteen, talking his way into a job too old for him just like Lucy once had.  
“I had the qualifications to be a physician’s apprentice younger than most, for all that,” Lucy concluded, “so you see how it came about.”  
She set aside the alcohol-soaked rag and reached for the bowl of poultice, which Tilda eagerly handed her. “This will sting,” Lucy warned, pressing a gob of the garlic-kingsfoil mash to the wound. Kili bit down on a groan, which slipped out instead as a quiet hiss. It would have seemed loud, in the sleeping room, if not for the prolific snoring of several dwarves, most notably Bombur.  
It didn’t sting, it burned, and the burning went on and on as Lucy held the stuff in place with a rag, face grim. He felt the bizarre sensation of pain bleeding down into his leg, concentrating there, instead of radiating out from the wound. “It’s drawing the poison out,” Lucy explained, and Kili frowned through his grimace because that was the first he’d heard of poison. “We saw a lot of injuries like this in Imladris – patrols, you know, guards coming in injured every month or so when the orcs surprised them or got in a lucky shot. You’re lucky I got the arrowhead out so soon, or you’d have been dead in days.”  
Dead. Kili’s head spun, but that could have been because the pain was tapering off and the relief was blissful. He realized that Tilda was patting his hand reassuringly, and found a smile for her.  
Lucy held up a curved stitching needle in warning and then bent to work. Kili blinked back the tears of pain that had gathered, watching her bowed head. He’d never had the kind of dedication that made someone a master scribe at Ori’s age, or a physician’s apprentice at – what was a human’s nineteen to a dwarf? – something like sixty. Perhaps because his role had been laid out for him even before birth – spare heir, royal brother, complement to Fili. It had always been a relief to him. Even when he was bad at being a prince, he’d always known what he would be and where he fit.  
No wonder Nori had vanished into the far reaches of Middle Earth for decades at a time when he was younger, and Lucy wandered like a rolling stone, and Bifur had taken occasional work as a sell-axe before the blade in his skull relegated him firmly and finally to tinker and toymaker. It was a frighteningly large world to be unanchored in.  
Lucy sat back quickly, and Kili was surprised to see that her stitches were even smaller and more even than Oin’s best work – but, of course, Lucy’s fingers were far more slender than any dwarf’s. It obviously lent to much finer stitching. Tilda looked too, interestedly.  
Sigrid had foreseen the need for bandages and now approached with them in hand. Lucy thanked her, and the other girl settled down to assist, falling so easily into the role of nurse that Lucy wondered how often her father smuggled home injured travelers.  
It was quick and easy work to smear more of the thick, goopy poultice over the stitches, press a thick, protective pad into place, and wrap it all up. To do the last, Lucy cut off Kili’s trousers just above the wound site, Sigrid hurrying off to find him a pair to borrow. The abundance of spare clothes in an otherwise obviously impoverished home also spoke to the number of visitors it must see.  
By then, the sun was setting and Tilda dozing off against Kili’s side, exhausted by the excitement. He shifted his arm to accommodate her, brushing off Sigrid’s murmured apology. He liked children, though he hadn’t encountered many of other races before. They were by and large happy creatures, clever, not yet trained into dullness by their elders, and game for any mischief. As far as Kili was concerned, there was little not to like about children.  
Lucy fell squarely into the same camp, and she smiled to see Kili glance down at Tilda fondly. The warmth in her belly was dangerous; she’d always been a sucker for a guy who knew his way around kids and animals, instead of treating both or either like mysterious and calamitous inconveniences. She looked down, passing the leftover bandaging back to Sigrid, and handing the wooden bowl of poultice up to Kili. “Eat,” she prompted, getting up. Her legs protested vociferously after so low spent kneeling.  
“What?” Kili blinked at the unappetizing green-and-white mash.  
“I thought you said it wasn’t for eating,” Tilda said, roused by the exclamation.  
“Not for you,” Lucy replied, winking. “And be glad, kiddo.”  
The word was unfamiliar, in Lucy’s language, but Tilda knew a pet name when she heard one and beamed at the attention. She giggled as Kili took an experimental bite of the stuff. It was so bad he choked – unbearably salty, the burn of half-raw garlic, something wet and green like the smell of mold.  
“I’ll bet you’d like water to wash that down,” Sigrid said quickly. “Tilda?”  
Tilda scampered across the room to fetch a mug as the rest of the Company began to awaken, roused by Kili’s coughing. Lucy was quick to pull his blanket across his lap, to cover the bandaging, and he gave her a grateful look around his continued hacking.  
“Don’t even try to chew,” Lucy advised as Tilda handed him a mug of water. “Just choke it down.”  
“Why?” Kili rasped.  
“For the poison that already made it into your blood,” Lucy replied. There was potassium in the kingsfoil to balance out the sodium in the salt, although she knew it had to taste awful. “Sigrid, could I bother you for a pair of trousers, too?”  
They both got dressed quickly, as Thorin was ordering everyone to ready as soon as he was on his own feet. “You can’t leave until my da says,” Bain protested.  
“He won’t like it,” Sigrid agreed, frowning.  
“He said to wait until nightfall,” Thorin returned shortly. “Night is falling.”  
“Where are we going?” Ori asked. He’d spent the time before the nap sketching Bard’s home and family, not listening to the talk.  
“The armory,” Lucy replied, looking to Thorin. “Aren’t we?”  
“Aye,” Dwalin agreed. “We cannae fight with these poor excuses for weapons.”  
“You can’t do that!” Bain protested. “Da’ll be furious!”  
“We don’t care,” Thorin said, glowering over being challenged by a child. “Your father has been paid for his services.”  
“And he has our thanks,” Balin added swiftly. “As do you and your sisters. Now be a good lad and tell us the way there, hmm?” At Bain’s quick shake of the head, he looked to the girls. “Sigrid? Tilda?”  
“We won’t say,” Sigrid said stubbornly, crossing her arms. “You have to wait for Da.”  
“I know the way,” Nori volunteered. “I’ve been here before.”  
“Good lad,” Balin said, slapping the younger dwarf on the back. “Let’s set out, then. Everyone in order? Yes? Then quickly, come on, after Thorin, now –”  
And they were out the door in short order. Lucy paused to give the kids an apologetic look and a last word of thanks, and then she was hurrying after the others in the twilight, eyes automatically gauging the severity of Kili’s limp, and trying to judge to which degree he was hiding it.

 

It seemed a simple enough plan, if improbable in the execution – Nori concocted it, which put the scheme immediately into the good favor of everyone but Dori, who routinely disapproved of his younger brother’s actions and ideas, seemingly out of habit.  
Kili had a bit of trouble running up the dwarf-ladder, but Fili caught him by the shoulders and heaved him through the window, and Lucy made it up under her own power only to stagger right into Kili’s arms, trying to keep her gasping quiet because Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, maybe I shouldn’t try mountain-climbing anytime soon, after all.  
Everyone else was inside in implausibly short order, jostling and murmuring and doing an all-around poor job of keeping as quiet as Lucy, and particularly Bilbo, would have liked. The hobbit looked almost painfully tense, near-silent as his own people often were even when it wasn’t altogether called for.  
It was Kili who ultimately doomed the plan, because he lied when Thorin asked if he was alright, because he still didn’t want his uncle to know he was injured beyond a cut or a scrape, and the last axe in the stack was the one that sent him tumbling top over teakettle down the guardhouse stairs, to the tune of a truly ungodly clamor.  
And though they may have left an odd window open and unattended, just waiting to be used by an opportunistic Company, the city guards of Laketown were swift in cornering the offenders.  
They were also swift in marching their prisoners through the town, although Lucy couldn’t figure out why until they were all forced to their knees before a great hall of a house, a man of apparently high social status and infrequent hygienic upkeep emerging to eye them all suspiciously. Then Lucy knew that they were an example, in a time of unrest evidenced by Bard’s artillery of crude weapons. Fuck.  
“Enemies of the state, eh?” sneered the man on the doorstep.  
“A bunch of mercenaries if ever there was, sire,” said the obvious and unctuous toady at his heel. Lucy unfortunately corroborated this by snapping at the fingers of the guard whose hand on her shoulder had strayed to stroking her neck. Gloved though he was, he snatched his hand away.  
It was Dwalin who spared them whatever surely-grisly fate awaited enemies of the state, because it was he who drew Thorin forward to speak, and once Thorin began speaking, as usual, all who listened were in his thrall. Lucy spent the duration of his speech trying to surmise the state of Kili’s leg through his trousers, checking that Ori wasn’t unduly upset by the situation, eyeing the crowd’s reaction, and glaring at the guard who’d gotten handsy to discourage him from doing so again. It was also snowing, and some her attention was diverted to the effort of not shivering, because she was still relatively damp, and very cold.  
Bard’s interruption sat ill at ease with her, and she exchanged a worried look with Bilbo. Neither of them had heard of any prophecy about their Quest, let alone one that foretold fiery failure.  
By the time the whole matter was settled, Lucy would have been just as happy to be in jail as the mayor’s house, so long as it was warm (and provided that Nori was there to break them all out, of course).  
But the mayor’s house was preferable. They all had several minutes to make their personal inspections as musicians and food were summoned, the singing and dancing in the streets beginning behind the quickly-closed doors. Lucy would have bet good money that the mayor didn’t want the common folk to see the interior of his home, even though the overall impression was one of moldering opulence rather than regular income – the tapestries, rugs, and curtains were all very old and very rich, but moth-eaten and steeped in dust; the floors hardwood, but the varnish worn through in the areas of heaviest traffic. The silk wallpaper had shrunk and contorted in the constant humidity of the lake air, the silver all tarnished solidly black for the same reason. Brass fittings and hardware had gone dull. The ceiling rafters were visibly dusty and cobwebbed, even ten feet overheard. Dust bunnies and animal hair of indeterminate species had accumulated in the corners of each room and corridor.  
The food, however, when it had finally been prepared and served, was quite good. So was the wine, which the mayor was quick to boast came all the way from the Woodland Realm, and Lucy avoided it, because she liked elvish wine but didn’t want to chance even a single glass tonight, not with the slimy henchman peering at her over the tabletop and asking her if she was sure she didn’t want to indulge. In another world, she’d have suspected him of drugging the stuff.  
It was still a good time, though – the more they drank, the more raucous the dwarves became, as usual, until everyone was laughing and shouting all at once. Even Bilbo joined in, flushed pink up to his ears from wine, Bofur winding an arm around his shoulders to tug suggestively at the lobes, to yet more laughter and shy smiles from the hobbit. And Thorin graced them all with a grudging smile, though it was easy to see in his eyes that he didn’t think there was time for this. He couldn’t call a stop to the festivities, though, not without crushing morale and offending their host to boot.  
Kili was quite pleased with the seating arrangements, having finagled himself a spot between his brother and Lucy. Ori was on her far side, the two trading phrases in random languages as often as Lucy and Bifur exchanged lightning-quick side remarks in Iglishmêk across the tabletop. What little Kili could catch of the later seemed to be either about Bilbo and Bofur’s romantic possibilities or disparaging remarks about the Master of Laketown and his creepy underling. None of it was surprising – according to his brother and cousin, Bifur was an incorrigible gossip, though others rarely knew it because few spoke Old Khuzdul or had the energy or wherewithal for long conversation in Iglishmêk.  
Lucy was equally happy, closed in by the other youngsters at her sides, the two graybeards she was closest to just across the table (Bifur and Dwalin). Thorin was comfortably far away and distracted by serious conversation with Balin, Oin, and Gloin. If her leg occasionally jostled Kili’s, or the other way around, or one or the other of them had to reach across the other for a platter or a pitcher, that was just fine, too.  
It was harmless as long as she kept her head on straight. Lucy could find a friendly, unthreatening acquaintance for a tumble, but she didn’t tumble her friends, and there was no chance, with Kili, for a real relationship. And she knew there was nothing there – Kili was a dwarf, in a world where everyone was disturbingly open about their racial prejudices, and a prince, and quite possibly gay, if one of Fili’s more drunken anecdotes, late in the evening, was to be believed. (She hoped not despite herself, even as it was hopelessly funny to watch Kili climbing all over his brother in a desperate and largely unsuccessful bid to end the storytelling.)  
By the time everyone began winding down, it was close to one in the morning, and Lucy was feeling a little loose-limbed and giggly just from sleep deprivation. She hadn’t slept much in the Woodland Realm, and hadn’t napped that afternoon with everyone else, except for perhaps half an hour.  
She was hardly alone – Bilbo was charmingly unhinged, giggling in a very un-Bilbo-like fashion as he turned down Bofur’s unsubtle invitation to share a bedroom, prodding the dwarf in the chest as he stated, clearly unbothered, that he was clearly only after his physical affections, and Bilbo was not that sort of hobbit, no sir. Dwalin and Balin had managed to coax enough wine into Thorin that he seemed almost relaxed as he bid everyone goodnight. Bombur had a case of the hiccups that had several onlookers in fits of laughter. Oin was snoring on the table, his cheek cushioned by a grilled fish his brother had thoughtfully lifted his head to slide into place for a pillow. Fili had long gone to bed, around the same time as his uncle, after a brief and slurred argument with his brother about whether or not Kili should accompany him. Ori had long been carried off to bed, literally, by Dori, despite his protests, and Nori was giving Dwalin heated looks over the table that had Lucy blushing in embarrassment even though she’d watched Bofur tease Bilbo half the night with only amusement.  
Shaking her head, she stood up. “I’m for bed,” she announced, and there was a chorus of replies ranging from bids to dream sweetly to pleas to stay and have a drink.  
“I’ll walk you,” Kili offered, standing. He glanced around the room’s edges, seeing no hint of the unibrowed manservant. “I don’t like that I can’t see that beady-eyed salamander-man.”  
“I can take care of myself,” Lucy replied, yawning. If she didn’t know that Kili knew that, she would have been irritated right out of her sleepiness.  
“I know,” he assured her, proving her right. “But you don’t always have to.”  
I do, though. No one else will, or not for very long.  
They walked slowly, Kili favoring his leg more as they moved out of the other’s sight, out of the bright lamps of the dining room and into the dimmer corridor. “How badly does it hurt?” Lucy asked, glancing down.  
“Not very,” Kili replied, flashing a smile that usually had dwarves of any gender or inclination going along with whatever mad lie or request he posed.  
Lucy only frowned, stopping near one of the irregularly placed and soot-clouded lamps. “I’m serious, Kili Oakenshield,” she warned. “Don’t be a fool. If you want me to keep that a secret, you’ll tell me how it’s doing, and no lies.”  
“It’s not bad, I promise,” Kili said quickly, catching her hand and squeezing. He grinned. “But that’s not my name.”  
“Oh, shut up,” Lucy said, tired but laughing. “Where I come from, families all share a single second name, none of this son-of, daughter-of business.”  
“Lucy Bell,” Kili said aloud. Perhaps her people made bells, then, or were known for having singing voices that sounded like the peal of one, because Lucy’s did.  
He said it innocently, testing the sound, but Lucy still shivered, unable to help it when she was tired.  
“Is it your back?” Kili asked quickly, stepping closer.  
“No, that’s fine,” Lucy replied reflexively.  
The prince immediately adopted a stern, self-important tone. “Now, don’t be a fool, Lucy Bell,” he intoned mock-seriously, relishing her giggle. “This is all very serious business, you know.”  
“It is, though!” Lucy protested around her own laughter, “For you!”  
“Oh, just for me, then?” Kili arched his eyebrows at her.  
“I’m a healer, I can look after myself,” Lucy said, adding thoughtlessly, “Besides, it’s important you stay healthy.”  
Kili knew exactly what that meant – how many times had he thought that Fili was the more important out of the two of them, that it only mattered if his brother got good marks from their tutors, did good work in the forge, had Thorin’s favor. He frowned, his fingers tightening in Lucy’s as he stepped forward again, his free hand reaching up to catch the back of her neck, to draw her forehead down to his. “You’re just as important,” he said firmly, meaning it. “Some of us wouldn’t know what to do without you, Lucy Bell.”  
“You carried on just fine before,” Lucy retorted, knowing her breath probably smelled like onion from the tartlets she’d eaten too many of and reminding herself that the forehead thing was platonic and don’t be a fool just because he’s saying what you want to hear, people never know what they’re promising when they say those things.  
“Ah, yes, before,” Kili replied easily. He wished he could meet Lucy’s eyes, but she’d closed them when their heads met. “I’d have thought that you would know how impossible it is to go back.”  
Lucy sighed. She did, of course, which was why she was so afraid to say that she wouldn’t know what to do anymore, without her friends in the Company. She was afraid to admit it to herself, but she knew it anyway, knew that after this was all over, one way or another, she’d be alone and floundering, unused to being so untethered once again.  
Which was why she kissed him, because she would be alone again soon enough, she should take what she could when she could, and while Kili wasn’t exactly offering, she doubted he’d turn down just a kiss.  
And he didn’t, although he was taken aback – wonderfully, giddily taken aback, and quick to recover, adjusting the angle of his neck to meet her mouth better and it wasn’t awkward at all, being the shorter partner, not like he’d half-suspected it would be, it felt just as natural and pleasant as it had in the past, with others of his height or shorter, with dwarves or dams. It felt right.  
Lucy was buzzing a little on her first kiss in – what was it, two years? – on the feeling of Kili’s hand in her hair, and in hers, and her free hand fisted into his ill-fitting borrowed shirt. It took her a split second to realize he was drawing back, too soon, to notice that he was looking up at her very seriously even with his chapped lips pinker than usual and his pupils wider than usual, both of which made her want to jump on him.  
“How much did you drink?” he asked, very seriously.  
“I didn’t,” Lucy said, slightly blindsided by the question, and understood when she saw his relieved, happy smile and he leaned in again and yes, thank you, carry on, perfect.  
The second kiss was better than the first – they had the angle and the rhythm down already, lips and tongue sliding together easily, slowly, no urgency, like it was never going to stop. Lucy felt her clit throb when Kili nipped gently at her lower lip, a whimper jumping from her throat, and she wondered dizzily why she was so hot already and realized it was because she hadn’t had anything real since before she was catapulted from one world to the next, had been missing the added umph of an emotional connection for years.  
She drew their intertwined hands to her breast and left his there, and Kili gasped in something like relief because he’d wanted to touch so badly but steady, never move too quickly, always be polite. He might not have had the good manners most would expect from a prince, but he had the common courtesy not to push his partners into the bedroom. His mother alone had made sure of that, even if aggression hadn’t been more or less absent from his temperament.  
Lucy’s hands were on his chest now, his arms, pressing and gripping like she was testing his muscle, and if the little noises she was making into his mouth were any indication, she wasn’t finding him lacking, and the noises, if he’d let himself think on the matter overmuch he would have guessed her to be quiet, after seeing her swallow sounds of pain, but she wasn’t, she was making beautiful little gasps and moans and whimpers and he was making similar sounds right back because it was so good, he hadn’t enjoyed kissing this much since he was half-grown and taken up in the daring of such a thing.  
Kili was half-hard by the time he remembered that they were in the hallway, kissing and groping like adolescents, and only then because the members of the Company still in the next room burst into a bout of particularly loud laughter. They weren’t even tucked into a corner or up against a wall – he’d retained enough presence of mind not to press Lucy back, and she didn’t seem to have any interest in pinning him, either, though he wouldn’t have minded.  
It was enough to make him draw away, though he couldn’t seem to stop his hips grinding against Lucy. “Should stop,” he said, a little breathless, and then he turned his head to kiss her neck, because it was handily at the level of his mouth and he hadn’t, yet; somehow it hadn’t occurred to him to stray from her mouth, and no real wonder there, not when they were kissing like they had been.  
Lucy’s pupils were blown wide, circled by a narrow ring of green. “Or move,” she suggested, and then shook her head. “Never mind.”  
Kili didn’t ask, though he was curious, because he wasn’t that sort of Dwarf, and instead he bumped his forehead against hers, afraid to kiss again in case they ended up with someone stumbling across them. Lucy shared the same reluctance, although it was hard to hold onto with his hand was still on her breast, thumb drawing lazy circles around her nipple like he wasn’t really thinking about it (he was), and she already knew she’d be replicating that touch when she brought herself off. She didn’t really like masturbating, never had, only resorted to it when it couldn’t be avoided, and it couldn’t be avoided now, not if she wanted to sleep tonight.  
Not if she didn’t want to negate her negation and confuse them both.  
“Goodnight,” she said, and stepped back, Kili letting his hands fall reluctantly, her own hands leaving blooms of wrinkled fabric in his shirt. Kili chuckled as he plucked at them, glancing at Lucy with eyebrows raised.  
“Oh, hush,” she replied, although he hadn’t said a word and she was grinning, herself, and then she let herself into the room she’d chosen earlier because otherwise it would have gone back to the kissing, and Bifur would have been the one to find them when he packed himself off to bed only a moment later, though drunk as he was he might not have noticed anything amiss. 

 

The next morning was cool, and witnessed by few members of the Company. Lucy made more hangover jokes than she’d had opportunity to in a while, asking loudly if the lights were too bright, clattering crockery as she passed around breakfast, whistling cheerfully to watch Nori wince.  
“Oh, be still, ye wee beast,” Dwalin complained. “We know we haven’t your sense, now do take mercy.”  
Relenting, Lucy poured him a mug of tea, and he gave her a grateful nod before sipping. “I don’t know where you get off calling me ‘wee’,” she remarked, and the warrior glowered at her over the mug.  
“I may only be your height, but I’ve thrice your weight and Mahal knows how many times the experience,” he informed her gravely. “I’ll see you to spar this evening, lass.”  
“Why not now?” Lucy quipped, and laughed at the gentle blow he landed on her shoulder in retribution.  
Her mood only improved when Kili made his appearance, trailing his brother like a moaning and red-eyed kite tail. He gave Fili a few restorative smacks on the back, squeezing his shoulders as Lucy poured them both tea. They smiled over Fili’s head, and Lucy promptly sloshed tea out of the mug and over the table.  
Is hungover worse than sober and clumsy? Bifur signed, smirking, and those who saw him chuckled, except for Bombur, who was nursing a skull that felt as tender as a pickled egg.  
Neither Lucy nor Kili saw, and they were both quick to sit down as Thorin entered, looking crisp and alert as usual. He surveyed the sorry state of his Company, gaze lingering on Bilbo as he groaned into a bucket that very newly contained his vomit while Bofur rubbed his back. “We have but five days to find the hidden door,” he announced, reminding them all. “We will take as few days here as possible, to gain and pack provisions and forge the weaponry supplied by the city guard into workable condition, and then we will journey up the Mountain.”  
That being said, he sat down, and Balin stood up to assign teams – Lucy, Oin, Kili, Bilbo, Nori, and Ori to supply the mission with the funds they’d been granted by the Master of Laketown, and the rest to work in the forges.  
“Aren’t we lucky,” Lucky observed to Kili when everyone was eaten and dressed and out the door. Nori and Ori were ahead of them, Ori chasing his brother to try and get back the mittens Nori had stolen right out of his pockets, Oin muttering to himself about salves and poultices as Bilbo checked and re-checked the list that had been drawn up over breakfast.  
“Not luck,” Kili replied, amused and distracted by the fight for the mittens. “We’re all the ones useless in a forge. Nori never learned because he was already a thief by the time he was old enough, Ori’s never had the heart or the muscle for it, Oin’s the healer, so he has to go to the apothecary himself, Bilbo’s a hobbit, obviously, and the last time I was in a forge I burned half the skin off my arm.” He rolled his left sleeve up to show the scar, pink and shiny, but old enough that hair had grown through it.  
“What about me?” Lucy asked archly. “For all any of you know, I could be more than half-decent with a hammer.”  
Kili choked on a startled laugh, even though he knew . . . well, he thought she didn’t know the double entendre there, but she looked just a little too innocent, watching him sputter and laugh. “Are you, then?” he asked, not wanting to offend her by dropping the subject, if she was serious about forging.  
Lucy glanced in the direction of his trousers, shrugged. “Yes in one way, no in the other,” she said, and grinned at his renewed mirth.  
“Do keep up!” Bilbo shouted back to them, but his attention was immediately diverted. Oin was shouting, too: “Nori, give back the mittens, for Mahal’s sake! Ori, get away from that edge, you’ll fall into the lake!”  
“I think they could spare us,” Lucy mused, glancing at Kili sidelong, and no sooner had the words left her mouth than he’d pulled her into the nearest alleyway, and he just had time to see her grin before they were kissing again.

 

It was a very long day for Oin, and he often felt more like he was watching dwarrows whose parents were away for the day than he felt like he was being in any way assisted with the shopping. Nori was just as bad as the young ones, when he was away from Dori’s judgmental gaze, teasing and tricking Ori relentlessly. Lucy, whom Oin knew to be a very sensible girl, was as cheery and useless as Kili, who was being his usual unhelpful self with an extra measure of particularly irritating good humor. The hobbit was painfully hungover and of little help even when that finally wore off, distracted and jumpy when surrounded by so many big people.  
It was Nori who finally took pity on the older dwarf, and only then because Oin was going to be properly swindled by a merchant. They all helped carry, at least. Ori’s load mysteriously grew heavier over time, until he set down his baskets to investigate and found things from Nori’s allotted burden among his own. That particular incident ended with an onion smacking Nori so solidly in the back of the head that it burst apart, which in turn had Lucy and Kili in stitches with laughter.  
By the end of the day, Oin had half a mind to ask Thorin to either cut Fili loose from the forge to rein in his brother, or to cut Gloin so the more fearsome of the two brothers could exercise some control over the youngsters. And Nori. Though if he really wanted a handle on Nori, he’d need either Dori or Dwalin. Dwalin would be good, everyone listened to Dwalin . . .  
Their small group found the others to be in steadier spirits, exhausted by a day’s hard work. Lucy was fairly certain it was the only occasion on which she’d seen Fili’s braids really disheveled. Thorin had lost his completely, his hair tied back at the nape of his neck, and Lucy thought that it improved his appearance greatly. He didn’t look nearly as somber as usual when he wasn’t staring broodingly out from under black braids.  
Dinner was much quieter than it had been the night before, with most of them so tired, and Balin did his usual work as diplomat, regaling the mayor with tales of Ered Luin and snippets of dwarvish history. Lucy listened with interest that matched even Ori’s, though she was frequently distracted by Kili – even when he wasn’t flicking peas across the table to get her attention, she found him in her peripheral vision and her eyes slowly shifted that way.  
It had been a good day, she reflected as she watched him and Fili play a miniature game of Fox and Geese with peas and corn kernels. Full of fun, and laughing, and not the least, kissing. She figured that it would last her quite a while, in terms of staving off loneliness. The worst part would be directly after the Quest ended, when the suddenness of being alone would leave her reeling. The absence of others around her would ache like a gum missing a recently-lost tooth. That would fade in a few weeks, though, probably, would mellow into the usual hollow ache, the kind that could be held back with the combination of good memories and one day it’ll be like that again. 

 

The evening mellowed after the Master retired, Dori bundling Ori off to bed early despite his protests, Lucy and Bifur falling into an engaged and animated discussion that few of the others could follow. Dwarves used Iglishmêk in the forges, primarily (which was one reason it was not among Kili or Ori’s strong suits), and usually in a kind of shorthand that passed over the complex and freestanding grammar of the signed language. To use it fluidly and fluently was uncommon, especially since it had various dialects between the Seven Kingdoms and Khuzdul was mutually comprehensible.  
Even as the signed conversation moved into what looked to Kili like a discussion of various animals as household companions (Lucy was fond of cats, if he understood correctly), he lingered at the table. It was bold and presumptuous to think Lucy might want something to do with him away from others’ eyes, but not terribly so, not after all the kissing of the day. That had been lighthearted fun, though, almost a lark. And he didn’t mind that, but he did wonder what she wanted with him.  
She sent a wink his way at that moment, which anchored him firmly to his seat at the table, despite Fili’s dire warnings that he’d be tired in the morning for staying up late. His brother’s heavy tone hinted that he knew something was afoot, but Kili ignored him. Lucy was not Fili’s business, even if his brother’s doubtless half-baked idea of what was going on was close to the truth.  
Kili hoped it wasn’t just a lark. 

 

“He wouldn’t stop talking about rabbits,” Lucy complained, chuckling as Kili joined her in the corridor. He’d prudently waited a minute or so before following her, pleased to find that she’d divined the plan and was waiting for him, not affronted and in bed alone. Stop thinking about beds. “He really can go on about rabbits.”  
“He is unaccountably fond of them,” Kili observed, and then he cupped Lucy’s cheek in his hand, smiling. “Hullo.”  
“Hello.” Lucy’s smile was bright enough to light up the dim hallway.  
There really wasn’t any smooth, graceful way to ask what she wanted of him, so Kili contented himself with stroking his thumb over Lucy’s cheekbone for the moment, and it was easy to be content with. Her skin was so soft, even wind-chapped as it was from the constant cold air gusting over the lake, and she turned her head to press against his palm. Lucy pressed a small kiss there, more or less innocently, but innocent went right out the window when she bit the flesh at the base of Kili’s thumb, and in an instant their mouths clashed together again, a little too hard so their teeth knocked, but neither cared.  
“Mahal, I want you,” Kili gasped when they came up for breath. His hands were on her waist, tightening and relaxing fitfully, wanting to grasp but afraid of bruising. “Anything you want, I –”  
Lucy reached back for the door handle of what she was ninety percent sure was her room – she’d staked out the hallway from there, but they could easily have moved down a room’s length when they were kissing. She had no idea. Who’s next down? Dwalin and Balin? Fuck.  
Thankfully, though, the door opened on her room, which she backed into so hurriedly that her heels hit the door and knocked it into the wall. Kili made a grab for it even though the thunk had already sounded, wincing, and Lucy took the opportunity to glance back, around the room. Fire banked, embers glowing, a lamp by the canopy bed . . . no stray secrets strewn about, that was good, although by now Kili knew so many of them that one or two more revelations wouldn’t really have hurt either of them (excepting, of course, the big one).  
She looked back around to see that Kili had left the door mostly closed, but not quite, gentledwarf that he was, and reached past him to press it into place for the lock to catch, which it did when she turned it. It seemed that the locks hadn’t been allowed to go to ruin like the rest of the hall, and she was wholeheartedly glad.  
Kili felt the sound of the tumbler falling into place echoed in a throb of his cock, which was really getting ahead of him in terms of what was and was not polite to expect, even if Lucy was pressing him back against the door as she kissed him, her hips rolling against him, and he could feel her heat right through their trousers.  
“Don’t want – fuck, Kili –” as he bit her neck “– don’t want to fuck, been a while, I’m good with my mouth?”  
What little blood hadn’t been headed for Kili’s groin already promptly redirected itself. “Mahal, yes,” he groaned, and they ended up stumbling towards the bed all tangled together, because neither of them cared to let go of the other, and Kili made the dwarrow’s mistake of trying to get his tunic and shirt off in one go without undoing the laces of either, to Lucy’s laughter. He could hear her hopping on one foot to undo the buckles of her boots as he wrestled the fabric off over his head, and the cloth hit the floor at the same time as Lucy’s second boot. A glimpse of metal inside caught his eye, but he wouldn’t have investigated even if there weren’t much more interesting matters at hand – namely Lucy kneeling on the bed, dilated eyes raking over his torso and her lower lip in between her teeth, two points of rosy pink high on her cheeks.  
Kili was up next to her in a heartbeat, and Lucy bit down on a moan just from touching his bare chest. He had a moment of scattered nerves – he wasn’t half as hairy as others his age, but still hairier than most Men, and he didn’t have Dwalin or Gloin’s impressive muscles – but she didn’t look disappointed and she was talking. “You’re healthy, right?” she said, pressing a hand to his forehead. No fever. She returned her touch to his chest, unable to help herself. “I’ve never seen any sign you’re not.”  
“No, I am,” he assured her. “It’s been – years since I was with anyone.”  
“Me, too.” Lucy kissed him, and he would have made more assurances, but his tongue was somewhat busy with hers, and it wasn’t long before Lucy rolled him onto his back, kissing her way down his chest and belly, tugging lightly at his treasure trail so the not-quite -pain spiraled down into his cock and he was glad she was already headed that way because it had been quite some time since he’d had anything but his own hand and he wouldn’t last through much teasing.  
Lucy paused to give Kili a stern look, tugging a little harder at his hair so he’d look up. “Don’t move your hips,” she warned, and he wanted to say that of course he wouldn’t, who would be stupid enough or rude enough to do that, but then she had a hand down his trousers and his head fell back against the bed as he arched up off of it. He groaned, unable to help himself.  
Quite pleased with the reaction she was getting, Lucy worked his trouser laces the rest of the way open and tried to tug the pants off, momentarily stymied by dwarvish boot fastenings so that Kili had to drag himself out of his daze to sit up and help her, the both of them laughing when they knocked skulls over the task, and if Lucy was usually pretty, she was lovely when she was bright-eyed and wide-pupiled and pink-cheeked and laughing all at once. It took a colossal expenditure of willpower not to flip them over on the bed, but memory of Lucy’s back stopped him, and so he did the next best thing and dragged her down for a kiss, one that went on and on until her hand found his hammer again, now both of them working, one stroking and massaging and tugging his shaft, her thumb rolling over his crown, the other gripping and carefully rolling his gems against the palm, and it was more than enough, it was excellent, and he honest-to-Mahal whimpered when she pulled away.  
“Don’t,” he gasped, trying to draw her back into the kiss, his eyes unable to move from her slick lips.  
“Want you in my mouth,” Lucy gasped back, and he almost came just from that, getting his fingers tight around his base quickly enough to stave it off, even if it hurt, because sweet Aulë yes, please, and then I could die a happy Dwarf.  
Lucy scooted down on the bed, ignoring the protests of her back, taking a moment to admire Kili’s cock – admiration that was lost on him, as he was trying to spell things backwards in Khuzdul to keep the anticipation from getting to him.  
He was clean, which was a relief. She was fairly surprised by his size – larger than she’d been expecting, though not by any metric disproportionate, and thicker than any other she’d had. It was also warm and smooth and iron-hard and listing slightly to the left, which was somehow endearing. Lucy kissed the side of the shaft lightly, and then rubbed her cheek against it as she buried her nose in the wiry black hair at his base, because that was clean, too, and smelled like soap and musk and her mouth was actually watering.  
She started slowly, because she wanted Kili to last, and guided one of his hands into her hair when it seemed likely that he would keep both of them firmly fisted into the bedclothes otherwise. It didn’t take her long to get lost in it, pulling out half-forgotten tricks to make Kili groan and gasp because every sound he made went right to her clit, and after a while her throat relaxed enough that she could take him to the root even though it had been a while, so she could take away one of her hands to rub between her own legs, eyes closing at the sensation because it was so good, even if having her mouth so full reminded her other parts what they were missing. She was disappointed to feel her lips going numb after several minutes, the familiar ache building at the hinges of her jaw, because it really was good – Kili’s fingers rubbing her scalp and combing through and tugging at her hair, encouraging instead of demanding, the fragmented Khuzdul she was wringing out of his throat, the hot, living weight of him in her mouth and throat, the fine trembling in his hips as he held resolutely still, which was impressive in and of itself, since usually someone lost their grip and bucked up at least once.  
She finished him off by humming as her tongue teased at his glans, inside his foreskin, ignoring his considerate and urgent words of warning, and then slid a knuckle behind his balls and pressed up, putting indirect pressure on his prostate. He came with a strangled sound that would have been a shout if allowed to run its natural course, instead of quickly muffled by Kili biting his own wrist.  
Lucy toyed with the idea of swallowing as she sucked him through his orgasm, although she decided against it. His spending wasn’t particularly salty or bitter, at least, more of a mineral taste, and she wondered if that was specific to dwarves or just to him.  
When he was definitely done, she leaned over the edge of the bed and spat into the chamber pot, and then slid up to lie next to him for a cuddle, not half as graceful as she normally liked to be in bed because her back felt stiff and was sending off sparks of pain like tiny electrical shocks. She planted a small, brief kiss at the corner of his mouth, in case he was one of those people who were weird about kissing after oral, and draped herself half-over his chest so she could nose at his hair where it had fallen over his shoulders.  
Kili stirred enough to get his arm around Lucy and kiss her forehead, and then her mouth when she turned her face up to him. “Bloody amazing,” he said, and noted that for the first time in his experience, Lucy looked smug. And rightly so – where or how she’d learned to do all of that, he had no idea, but he was glad.  
“Not too weird?” Lucy asked. Some guys and their asses . . .  
Kili squinted at her, nonplussed. “What part of that was weird?”  
Lucy shrugged as much as her back allowed these days and pressed closer to him, idly rubbing against his hip. Seeing and feeling Kili come had sated her enough to lie and soak up the warmth of his body and the firelight for a moment, but she was still so aroused it bordered just on the good side of painful, and if he didn’t take the hint of her grinding against him, she’d do something about it in a minute.  
Kili’s limbs needed another minute or two before they recuperated enough for movement, and when they did he rolled Lucy onto her back, his mouth angling after hers before he saw her wince, and then he was quick to sit up, moving back so she could do the same.  
“It’s fine,” she said, even as he cursed himself a fool for forgetting her back, and she kissed him, deeply, her mouth slack and warm and wet from sucking him. Kili chased the taste of his own seed, his mouth as lazy as hers, for a moment, from coming hard enough to see stars.  
“Do you want one?” he asked, hopeful, though he only half-expected her to say yes, disliking vulnerability as she did.  
“Fuck, yes,” Lucy mumbled against his mouth, feeling herself throb at the suggestion – how long had it been since that last happened?  
Kili drew back, Lucy kissing and sucking at his neck as he looked around, trying to think through the logistics, because he’d only ever eaten someone while they were lying on their back, and Lucy obviously couldn’t do that. “Edge of the bed,” she suggested against his skin, which tasted pleasantly salty from sweat. “I can sit up.” Her eyes glinted, a little wicked, before she lowered them to keep at the lovebite she was working into his throat where it met his shoulder. “And you can kneel.”  
Immediately taken with the idea, Kili moved away, sliding off the edge of the bed and onto the floor. Lucy thoughtfully handed him a pillow for his knees, and he realized as he knelt that he was bare as the day he was born while Lucy still had everything but her boots, and she slid out of her trousers, smalls, and socks without any help from him, wadding them up and tossing them over her shoulder without a glance to see if they landed on the bed or not. Kili grinned, running a cautious hand down her shin to grip her ankle – he wasn’t much for fussiness, himself.  
“Is your leg alright?” Lucy asked, remembering and frowning a little, and Kili nodded. He was slightly distracted by the width of her ankle in his hand, because it seemed impossibly delicate – her boots were much smaller than a dwarf’s, he’d obviously noticed that, but he hadn’t known how much of that bulk, slight though it was, was accounted for by leather.  
“You’re so small,” he said, a little surprised, and Lucy raised an eyebrow at him – he loved that, he still couldn’t raise just one of his brows alone, not for decades of trying.  
“Said the dwarf,” she challenged, and Kili grinned as he kissed one of her knees.  
“Did I disappoint?” he asked, jesting even though he suddenly wondered. He hadn’t had occasion to see any Men naked, let alone aroused –  
“You could bludgeon a warg with that hammer,” Lucy teased, remembering her surprise, and Kili muffled his laugh by gently biting the inside of her knee, and she could feel the vibrations exactly where she wanted his mouth to be, and the sooner the better.  
Kili pressed a kiss to the very faint red ring his teeth had left – it was fading even as he watched – and Lucy carded a hand through his hair, catching on the clasp in the back, which Kili was quick to reach back and remove, tossing it carelessly onto the bed. Lucy almost went after it, curious about the runes stamped into the silver that she knew she couldn’t read, but Kili was now rubbing his cheek against the bite mark, and the rasp of his beard sent the best kind of shiver down her spine.  
She was surprised to see him frown, tensing despite herself, but Kili only cupped a hand over her left knee, his thumb rubbing thoughtfully at one of her old surgical scars. “Deep,” he remarked. He was thinking how the four small white lines circled her kneecap with horrible precision, as if something sharp and thin and flat had been driven into the sensitive bundles of nerve and softer stuff behind the protective bone.  
“Old,” Lucy rebutted, quietly, combing his hair back from his face. She’d torn a tendon rock-climbing, a stupid mistake, and one quickly corrected by a surgeon and a physical therapist, so well that she hardly noticed it anymore. “It doesn’t matter.”  
Kili nodded, but he also pressed his lips to the widest scar, reverently, his eyes closing. Lucy closed hers, too, because it had been years since someone touched her like she was precious – beautiful, yes, desirable, yes. She’d been touched as if she were fragile, when she was injured, been handled with the brisk care of healers, been given platonic hugs or grips on the shoulder, but not touched like this.  
Not precious. Not dear.  
And that was dangerous, more than she’d bargained for when she invited Kili into her room (alright, when she dragged him in), so she was relieved when he abandoned the scars and began kissing his way up the inside of her right thigh, interspersing his kisses liberally with little nips and sucks, which combined with the scrape of his beard against her skin so effectively that Lucy was breathless again by the time he reached her mound.  
“Found your beard,” he remarked cheerfully, and she laughed even as she gave his ear a light yank for his insolence, the last of the lingering seriousness falling away.  
“You’re one to talk about beards,” she retorted. “Ori’s got more hair on his chin than you.”  
Kili grinned, rubbing his face against the crux of her hip and thigh. “Don’t like it?” he asked innocently, feeling her shudder, her fingers tightening in his hair, and he didn’t wait for a witty reply (which was good, because Lucy couldn’t have formulated one). Instead he nosed into her hair the same as she had done to him, the smell going straight to his cock – which made a valiant but doomed effort to rise. It’d be a while, after coming so hard after so long.  
‘Beard’ or not, Kili could see much more of Lucy’s trove than he remembered from his previous encounters, which was a little confusing – how doesn’t every little thing chafe her half-mad? – and also shockingly erotic, because he could see her skin, could see it flushed a deep, welcoming pink, he could see how swollen her folds were, parted for him even though she hadn’t been touched, glistening as wetly as her mouth when she’d first pulled away from his cock, eyes glazed and lips parted.  
He muffled his groan into her hip, his fingers twitching on her calves as his cock made another bid for a second round. Lucy made a soft keening sound she didn’t hear, herself, the groan rippling through her clit like a touch.  
And then there was a touch, Kili kissing her gem lightly, half because he was relieved that he’d found it, that Lucy’s trove seemed to be designed and oriented like a Dam’s, and half just because he could.  
He teased her a little, running his lips and the tip of his tongue or nose up and down the length of her folds, relishing the breathless half-mewling sounds she was making – he’d been twice as loud, he was sure, although he was fairly confident she’d be louder when he got his tongue on her and in her and his fingers in beside it.  
When her fingers tightened into a fist in his hair (which he liked, moaning so his breath blew over her folds, making her shiver), Kili began licking around her gem, lightly, at first, until she was gaining volume, gripping his hair more tightly, and then he used the old trick Fili had shared with him during a slightly-awkward conversation during their younger years, when Dams their age were still mystifying and intimidating figures and notes on success and failure had to be shared for the sake of all: he drew the letters of Westron around her gem with the tip of his tongue, both to find the methods Lucy liked best and to make him concentrate on something so he wouldn’t spend in his trousers like a dwarrow, which wasn’t currently an issue, but had been before and likely would be again.  
Lucy had lost the ability to think coherently even before Kili’s finger began teasing her opening, and she cried out when it slid into her, easily – she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this hot. Aroused even without an erection, Kili felt a little dizzy at the way her trove seemed to suck him in, hot and wet and slick. “More,” she gasped, somehow, even if she did have to fumble for the Westron to repeat herself so he understood, and Kili obligingly slipped his middle finger in with the first, and there was a slight stretch because his fingers were wonderfully thick and it had been a long time, and he began pumping them, slowly, sinking deeper each time until they were seated to the knuckle, his thumb massaging just below her gem, where he was still licking and sucking, and he crooked his fingers in what should be the right direction, immediately rewarded with Lucy’s cry and her walls clenching so hard around his fingers, forge-hot and luscious, that his hammer succeeded in rising a little. He did it again, massaging inside her for that spot and sticking to it when he found it again, thrusting once, twice, and she came on the third, unraveling so thoroughly that she fell back against the bed, her back arching off of it as she gasped words he couldn’t understand in an unfamiliar language.  
Kili drew himself onto the bed beside her, getting an arm around her and rolling so they lay the same way they had earlier, with her on top of him, so there was no pressure on her back. His leg ached all around the arrow wound, but not so much that he didn’t find it worth the trouble. Lucy opened her eyes, felt a jolt in her clit when she saw the mess she’d made of his beard, and then tucked herself closer against him. She was thoroughly exhausted, but didn’t want to sleep, not when he was still here. She needed to be awake for all of it, so she could shore up the memories – the warmth of the fire and the softness of the bed and the firm, solid press of Kili’s forehead against hers, his fingers drawing lazy patterns on the back of her neck, the rise and fall of his ribs against hers as he breathed.  
She also couldn’t fall asleep because he might stay the night, and all hell would break loose in the morning. She wondered if Thorin had had the foresight to include a clause in the Quest contract about expelling members if they fucked his nephew. Probably not, but he’d likely kick her out all the same.  
“You should go,” she said regretfully, when it was speak or fall asleep, and Kili stirred, looking a little surprised as his eyes opened, but not particularly hurt. Lucy eased her weight off of him, smiling ruefully. “If anyone saw you, in the morning –”  
Kili cringed, all too aware of the hiding he’d get from Thorin – verbal and physical, since Thorin tended to forget that his nephews had outgrown any age suitable for ear-boxing when they angered him enough. He didn’t even know what Thorin would say to Lucy, and it was not pretty to imagine. Nor was the lecture he’d get from Fili, all I told you so and Think what Mother will say when Thorin tells her.  
He sighed, rolling into a sitting position and looking around for his clothes – tunic and undershirt balled up on the floor at the foot of the bed, boots thrown or kicked against the far wall (he couldn’t remember which). Lucy got up to help, wiggling into her smalls but not bothering with trousers, and Kili admired the view as he went about the work of collecting his effects as slowly as he could. All that pretty skin with no hair to hide the view . . . she had lovely scars, here and there, glinting silvery-white in the firelight, except for a row of burns down the back of one thigh, which he hadn’t been able to see when she was sitting down. Those were dull pink, almost faded back into the matrix of her unscarred skin.  
It was a small room, and no amount of dawdling and ogling could make the work of clothes-collection last more than a few minutes. Kili made it into his clothes, kissed Lucy goodnight, and had a hand on the door to unlock it and go when he remembered that he’d been wearing smallclothes under his trousers.  
“Have you seen my smalls?” he asked, looking around for them, but was immediately sidetracked by the sight of Lucy, sprawled on her belly on the bed with her hair spread over her back and the coverlet. She looked asleep already.  
“Mmm.”  
It sounded like a noise of agreement, but there was no forthcoming explanation, or helpful point in the right direction. “Where?” Kili yawned.  
Lucy smiled against her arm, opening her eyes to watch Kili’s sleepy eyes widen when she replied, “Think I’m going to hang on to them, actually. ’Night.”  
And he left trying unsuccessfully to stifle his laughter.

 

In the next room, Dwalin cautiously lifted his pillow from his head, relieved that the noises seemed to have stopped. He pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment, and then rolled over and punched the pillow into a comfortable shape. Balin snored on beside him, wholly oblivious to any youngsters getting up to things they probably shouldn’t. “Lucky bastard,” Dwalin muttered.

 

The next day dawned bright and sunny, warmer than the one before it. Kili woke to the cool breeze through the window and sunshine on his face and grinned, stretching luxuriously. Not as good as waking up wrapped around Lucy, but still very nice.  
Or it was until Gloin came down the hallway banging on all the doors, and Fili woke up.  
“You got in late,” he observed, eyeing Kili suspiciously as he sat up.  
“Not that late,” Kili said. “You must’ve thought you slept longer than you did.” He’d tried not to wake his brother when he came in, but Fili always left his damn boots just inside the door, and when he was drink- or fuck-addled, Kili tended to forget the habit and fall over them.  
Fili nodded, yawning, and let the matter lie in favor of dressing as quickly as possible, so he could get to the bacon he smelled before Oin and Gloin ate it all.  
Brother gone in search of bacon, Kili spent a moment in front of the mirror, inspecting his neck where he knew Lucy had worked up a mark, but there was none now. He was momentarily disappointed, since the fact that she hadn’t made it to last said something, but quickly assured himself that it was for the best – no teasing or interference from others.

 

Lucy left her room whistling, glad she’d chosen the room on the end. She’d done it so she wouldn’t wake any more people than could be helped if she had a nightmare, but it seemed to have worked out nicely to keep anyone from overhearing her and Kili sucking each other silly – judging by the lack of Balin or Dwalin waiting outside her door with a noise complaint. They probably couldn’t hear anything over their own snoring.  
She wondered if Kili snored. Probably. She liked a partner who snored: it provided a metronome and barometer rolled into one.  
Her mood improved to almost giddy levels when she spotted Kili at the breakfast table, even if the only chair still available was across from him, and not beside – and not even directly across. So much for teasing under the table.  
Shaking her head at herself (I am not nineteen anymore), Lucy wedged herself in between Bilbo and Dwalin, the former scooting closer to Bofur on his far side to accommodate her. Ducking a little under Dwalin’s gaze (maybe he had heard something through his own snoring), Lucy helped herself to oatmeal and raspberry jam. She had a habit of mixing them together that thoroughly offended Bilbo’s sense of decorum.  
Kili was apparently much more attached to the teasing idea, because when Lucy looked his way again, his eyes were already on her, and he was licking his lips to chase the butter his toast had left there, eyes warm and hooded.  
It went right to her groin, of course, and Lucy was glad she didn’t blush over-easily as she quickly reached for the nearest pitcher of juice.  
She retaliated with a sausage – of course, what else? – even though she didn’t usually care for meat in the morning (yes in one way, no in the other, actually), and was rewarded by Kili aspirating half his mug of milk, choking and sputtering, Fili crying out in annoyance as his clothes were spattered.  
“Oh, do stop,” Bilbo fretted at her side, and Lucy jumped, shocked right out of remembering the weight of Kili’s cock in her mouth. The hobbit was bright red and mortified, darting glances between her and Kili.  
“Shhhhh,” Lucy hissed, mortified, hoping no one else had noticed.  
Bilbo tutted reprovingly. “Well, if you mean to keep it a secret,” he murmured pointedly, and crunched into a piece of toast for punctuation.  
Lucy looked back to Kili, who shot her a grin as he tried to wipe milk off his tunic. Fili dumped a retaliatory dish of plum preserves into his lap, Lucy laughing at Kili’s startled reaction even as she realized that it was going to be a long day, if they kept this up. Probably a very long rest-of-the-Quest.  
She could deal with that.

 

The day was indeed long, fraught as it was with well-hidden and precisely placed pinches, quick kisses, and warding off potential suspicions. Balin joined the shopping team for a short spell, which was unfortunate because he was just as astute as his brother, and even Nori was well-behaved around him. Or at least less wild, which was doubtlessly why Oin had begged Balin off forge duty.  
More unfortunately, the celebrations of the Company’s departure lasted well into the night. Lucy had had too much wine pressed into her hands to turn it all away, less worried about the mayor’s henchman after he saw her sitting tucked under Dwalin’s paternal arm. The old warrior seemed suspiciously keen on keeping her at the table, always quick to draw more food or drink their way when Lucy started talking about bed (usually while trying very hard not to look at Kili), or insisting that she stay to hear one of Nori’s stories, which were, admittedly, enthralling.  
Kili was having similar problems with his brother, who knew nothing but that which his intuition told him – and mainly, so far, he only suspected that something was in the wind, but an intuited suspicion was enough to make him keep plying Kili with wine and familial anecdotes recalled specifically to adhere the younger prince to his chair out of both nostalgia and obligation.  
It was closer to two in the morning than one when Lucy finally prized herself free of Dwalin’s protective arm and the protests of others at the table, while Kili was already gone from the room under the pretense of needing the water closet.  
Kili, for his part, didn’t need the closet, but had been forced to enter it instead of waiting in the hall for Lucy when Bombur gave him a curious look, doubtless wondering why someone would slouch about the empty corridor without going to bedroom, water closet, or back to the party.  
When he emerged, he was only partially surprised to be waylaid by Lucy. “An ambush,” he said, grinning.  
“Not a very successful one,” Lucy admitted, pressing her face into Kili’s hair. “Not on top of my game.”  
Kili drew back a little, eyebrows up. “How much did Dwalin get you to drink?”  
“Enough that I’m feeling particularly affectionate, but not enough that you should worry about doing something we’ve already done before,” Lucy teased. The statement bore enough wit and elocution to support itself. She was fairly good at holding a buzz without sliding too far either way to sobriety or inebriation. “Not properly drunk, in other words. You?”  
“Mm, little more than that,” Kili said, feeling them both sway a little. He chuckled against her neck. “You may be taking advantage of me. Fili wanted me incapable of sneaking away.” He stumbled a little over ‘incapable’, making Lucy giggle.  
At that moment he noticed the large shadow rise on the hallway wall, blocking light from the dining room, and the pair of them quickly separated.  
Lucy was relieved to see Dwalin, but he wasn’t sympathetic. “Thought ye were off for bed,” he said, giving Lucy a stern look, and then turning his gaze on Kili. “And yer brother’s all of a moment away from coming to find ye.”  
“Right,” Lucy said, trying to look neat and responsible, which wasn’t easy when she was buzzed for the first time in years and wanted to pin the dwarf nine inches to her left up against any flat surface (horizontal or otherwise). “We just crossed paths, said goodnight.” And, yawning, she opened the door to her room and went inside.  
She intended to wait for Kili to make another break for it, but she fell asleep long before Kili found himself shoehorned into bed beside his brother, waiting drowsily for Fili to start snoring, and falling asleep before that happened.

 

The fanfare the next morning struck Lucy as wholly absurd. The quiet and slightly disorganized departure from Bag End seemed much more in keeping with their ragtag group of misfits. There hadn’t been a chance, in all the fuss and kerfuffle – especially once she’d noticed Bofur missing and made it her task to find him where he was passed out under the table – for her to change out the poultice and bandages on Kili’s leg, and she tried to keep an eye on his gait as they walked down to the boat that had been arranged for them. It wasn’t easy, though – as Thorin’s nephew, Kili was right at the beginning of their procession, and she was at the tail end with Bilbo (preceded by Ori, Nori, and a rather disgruntled Dori).  
Thorin caught Lucy with an arm across her chest when she moved to step aboard. “If you slow us down, we will leave you,” he warned grimly, his blue eyes rueful as they moved over the crowds and then met hers. No malice. Only a king’s cold duty.  
“Understood,” Lucy said, and he nodded and let her pass.  
It took little more than an hour to reach the lake’s far shore by boat, and from there they found a wide road, encroached upon by nature over time, but still clearly evident. They followed it up, and up, into the foothills of the Lonely Mountain.  
They reached Dale shortly before noon. Lucy’s gaze lingered on the ruin even as the others began to move away. She was entranced by the idea of an entire city standing empty, frozen in time like Pompeii or Roanoke or Mycenae.  
She tore herself away to find Kili, who had taken opportunity of the brief stop to sit. “Leg?” she asked, quietly.  
“Fine,” he replied, and saw her brow arch. “No, truly,” he said, lowering his voice with a glance to Bombur, who stood nearest them. “It pains me, but not unduly.”  
Lucy nodded, mollified. There had been no sign of infection when she dressed the wound yesterday morning, and if the poison had still been at work, Kili would have been feverish, inchoate, dying. Either she’d done a decent job saving him, or the arrowhead hadn’t been poisoned at all. There was no real way of saying.  
She was distracted by Bilbo, his voice rising in concern when he realized that this was the overlook where Gandalf had told them to wait. Lucy looked around as Thorin disregarded the instructions the wizard had given weeks ago, sure there would be a sign, a symbol, something, since the wizard himself was not there.  
There was nothing. She couldn’t search the area thoroughly, of course, with everyone else moving back onto the road, but there would have been no need for Gandalf to conceal any communication. The whole area was abandoned to any but the Company on their mad Quest.  
If Gandalf hadn’t come, and hadn’t left any explanation or further guidance, something very bad must have happened. Seeing Lucy’s preoccupation, Kili fell in beside her. “Worried?” he asked.  
“A little,” Lucy admitted.  
“There’s no need,” Kili assured her. “He’s a wizard, after all.”  
“Right,” she agreed, but the matter still didn’t sit well with her, not for the duration of the afternoon. It distracted her from the grueling pace Thorin set, one that punished Bilbo and the les-fit dwarves even after all these weeks of hard travel, one that tugged fiercely at the skin of her back. Kili had Fili to help him along, muttering encouragement from time to time, but Lucy pushed on alone, doggedly. Whenever he looked back to make sure she hadn’t fallen behind, Kili found her instead ahead of him, so determined not to lag that she pushed herself ahead, remaining steadfastly in the center of the pack, where no one would notice that she was struggling.  
They managed to reach the end of the trail demarked by Thorin’s map by perhaps three in the afternoon, by which time everyone was sweaty and breathless and Kili could feel blood oozing from between his stitches. Lucy looked about as haggard as he felt, paler than the brisk air of the Mountain could account for, her lips tight and her jaw set.  
“If the map is true, the door should be directly above us!” Thorin called, unfurling the parchment to study it closely.  
It was Bilbo who spotted the stairway in the statue of Durin that stood before them. It was a wildly dangerous-looking zigzag – the kind of challenge Lucy would have found appealing if she had climbing gear and a fully functional body at her disposal, which she did not. As it was, she had to sit down for a moment, resting her head in her hands. Her back was throbbing like the beat of a drum – which was a horrible thought, because it called immediately to mind an old and half-forgotten boast made by the orc who’d chained her down in the dark: that when she finally died, he would make a drum from her skin.  
Bifur seated himself on the rock beside Lucy, pressing his hand against her ribcage to sign, Back pains you?  
Starting a little, Lucy lifted her free hand to sign back, in the air. Not bad, she lied. Your head?  
Old, he signed against her side. It only hurts when it snows. But your wounds are not old.  
Lucy smirked, eyes still closed to get the most out of the brief respite. Most of them are.  
“What are you talking about?” Kili asked, trying to hide his limp.  
Lucy looked up to smile at him, in time to see Bifur sign, –’s back hurts.  
I don’t know the word you called me, she signed back, frowning, Kili watching the exchange with his brow furrowed. Fili was better with Iglishmêk, since he worked in a forge regularly, but his brother was conferring with Thorin.  
You need a name, Bifur insisted, signing firmly, empathetically, and repeated the sign she didn’t know.  
Losing the patience to argue with someone who was trying to be kind, Lucy signed, I have a signed name already.  
Bifur waited, obviously expectant, and so did Kili, curious.  
Lost girl, Lucy signed, sighing, and then she stood. “I’m fine,” she said. “See?”  
She was saved having to demonstrate further by Thorin yelling for them to start again, Kili giving her a worried look and gripping her shoulder before moving to catch up to his uncle and brother.  
You need help, Bifur said firmly, frowning. We can ask for help.  
I can’t, Lucy signed back, unsure if he was lumping her in with those who were injured or disabled, or with dwarves in general, or maybe the members of the Company. And I don’t need it.

 

The climb took several hours. Lucy was relieved to find it not as difficult as it had looked. It was built for use by dwarves, of course, so her slight height advantage let her clamber from zig to zag more easily than the shorter members of their party. Bilbo had to be boosted up like a child every time, to his discomfiture.  
It was the sheer physical effort demanded by repeatedly hauling oneself up and over that made the climb so arduous, more than difficulty – that and the sheer drop to a sure death lurking ominously to one side.  
The small, flat nook in the mountainside at the top hardly seemed worth the climb, especially because the granite wall was featureless. Lucy hung back as Thorin approached it, letting the dwarves have their moment, as befitted. This was the home of their people, their promised land, and she felt acutely out of place.  
Her back had also begun bleeding partway up the staircase, and she wasn’t sure if it had bled through her light bandages and shirt. If so, the blood was probably hidden by her jerkin, but she still preferred to keep her back to the stone.  
It was painful to watch the hope and joy and relief fade from everyone’s face, to watch the dwarves smash their carefully-forged weapons to pieces against the granite wall, which remained featureless and smooth even as the last of the sunlight slipped away.  
Drained by the horrible turn of events, Lucy sat down to take a brief break before following the others back down, watching Bilbo sputter and shout as he stomped back and forth across the small shelf, subsiding after a moment into mutters. She didn’t particularly understand his investment in this Quest, but it was obvious he had one.  
Still, the door wouldn’t open. The Mountain was sealed. If there had ever been even an astronomical chance that there lay within a way for her to return home, that chance was gone now.  
She’d searched everywhere else that she could. Asked every wise counselor and arcane scholar who would see her. Traveled far and wide. Chased myths and half-forgotten lore.  
There was no way back. As Kili had said, going back was impossible, and as she had agreed, she knew that for herself.  
And the Company would disband soon, if not in Laketown then back East, stopping to drop off Bilbo at Bag End and the dwarves moving on to Ered Luin.  
Lucy would resume wandering. Alone. But now without hope.

 

The dwarves didn’t make it very far down before Balin said, “We have to wait for Lucy and Bilbo.”  
Thorin glared at him, but he couldn’t deny that there was no rush now. They came to a stop.  
The silence was heavy. Kili leaned against Fili, his chin hooked over his brother’s shoulder. No one had really believed the Quest a worthwhile venture, in Ered Luin, but the news of their failure would still be met with grief. Never again to return home, the final hope dashed . . . He wondered idly what Lucy’s secret had been, her second motive for joining the Quest. She had so many secrets . . .  
They were all roused from their grim, private thoughts by the excited shouts and whoops from above.

 

If Lucy had found the dwarves’ disappointment painful to behold, their joy was equally so – a privilege to witness, but poignant for the loss that had preceded it, and in light of her own circumstances. She didn’t even enter the Mountain, feeling very much an intruder.  
They didn’t dare to venture far inside, though, and quickly exited once again, with the exception of Bilbo. Lucy found herself slotted in between Kili and Ori on the ground. She felt warmer than she should have from shared body heat alone, at Kili’s side pressed all along hers, but that was only to be expected.  
“Your back?” he asked.  
“Hardly hurts,” Lucy lied. “You?”  
“Just fine,” he replied, and they waited, the silence tense. No one knew how long it might take Bilbo to do his reconnaissance, if he might awaken something terrible, if he would return bearing a gem.  
Lucy didn’t know much about the goal of this entire deranged mission – only that it was beautiful, big, white, and conveyed kinghood to its bearer. “Tell me about the Arkenstone,” she told Ori, leaning her head on Kili’s shoulder and watching the young scribe set up his sketchbook against his knees.  
“I only know what I’ve read,” Ori said modestly, head bent over his work. “It’s a large jewel, clear and bright, with its own light.”  
“It was like a star,” Thorin intoned, surprisingly. Lucy’s head lifted a little at the sound of his voice, a nervous reflex easily soothed by Kili gently gripping her knee. Fili frowned, noticing, although the four youngsters had exchanged far more and varied platonic touches over the course of the journey. “It was like a globe with a thousand facets; it shone like silver in the firelight, like water in the sun, like snow under the stars. It is more beautiful than may be imagined without laying one’s eyes upon it for oneself.”  
Lucy thought of the small diamond in her grandmother’s wedding ring. She enlarged it to fist-size in her mind, pictured a clear, bright white light radiating from within, imagined that it would cast rainbows all around itself. The conjured image was pretty enough, but not wildly impressive. She’d never much been one for sparkly or expensive things, perhaps because they’d been so wholly absent from her life. Unnecessary and even dangerous, because her old neighborhood hadn’t been the nicest neck of the woods and anything too flashy made the owner a target.  
She supposed she’d just have to wait and see the stone for herself, if it was really that impressive, and then there was the rumble under and all around them.  
“Was that an earthquake?” Dori asked nervously, although they all knew it wasn’t.  
The old dwarves, those who’d been in Erebor when it fell, looked grim. “That, my lad . . . was a dragon,” Balin said.

 

Every other tense moment during the Quest paled compared to the one that passed after several of the Company surged towards the door, and Bilbo, and Thorin commanded them to wait.  
Except perhaps the moment that Balin all but accused his royal cousin of insanity, although that did have the benefit of getting Thorin to enter the Mountain to see what was about and enact rescue as needed. He cautioned them to follow him only at need, in case the dragon had not yet awoken and too great a ruckus would rouse him. Dwalin was assigned the task of deciding how long they should wait before following Thorin, should he not return, either.  
It was a brief wait, and they entered the Mountain with weapons drawn. Not that Lucy expected them to fair particularly well against a fairytale beast that Bofur had more than once described as greater in size than any human house.  
All hell had already broken loose, as luck would have it, when the Company found Thorin and Bilbo, both thankfully alive, but with the dragon bearing down on them with fire in its gullet. Lucy reeled in horror as much from the booming, sonorous voice of the dragon as its appearance, which was beyond what any illustration or description could convey – even by Ori’s talented hand or Bofur’s elaborate narrative.  
There was immediate fleeing, half-running, half-sliding down a slippery, shifting slope of what Lucy realized was gold, gold which became molten from dragonfire as it chased their descent into some dim gray room protected from the flames. Thorin was last inside, shrugging out of his flaming coat as if it were an everyday occurrence, while Lucy was still gasping and wide-eyed and clutching Ori’s coat collar because her lower brain had assigned him priority status, at some point (probably as a proxy for Peter).  
And she was dumfounded to find that Kili had his hand in her belt for what had to be a similar reason, although he quickly removed it.  
More running then, and no way for Lucy to know if Thorin really remembered enough of the rambling subterranean city to know where he was leading, especially since the great, echoing halls all looked interchangeable to her, gray stone and geometric design. There were intermittent and terrifying glimpses of Smaug to hurry them on when they tired, until finally they reached the room Thorin had had in mind.  
It was a mass grave. Lucy stared at the still forms without really comprehending. She’d seen dead bodies before, dozens by this point, and many of them dead by her own hands, but these weren’t broken or bloody. They were blackened and shriveled by time, dusty and cobwebbed. They seemed wholly unreal.  
“That’s it, then,” Dwalin said grimly, and Lucy dragged her eyes up to look at him. “There’s no way out.”  
It took her another moment to see that the doorway beyond the gracelessly heaped bodies was blocked by a rockfall.  
“The last of our kin,” Balin observed bleakly, surveying the corpses. They were mummified by dry heat, appearing to Lucy to have been killed by smoke rather than fire. “They must have come here, hoping beyond hope . . .”  
The tragedy in the room was stifling; Lucy closed her eyes against it.  
“We could try to reach the mines,” Balin murmured. “We could last a few days.”  
“No,” Thorin replied. “I will not die like this . . . cowering.”  
Lucy would have preferred not to die in the foreseeable future at all, but that didn’t seem to be an option, not if no one else was bringing it up.  
But Thorin did – the idea that some, at least, might live, if others were sacrificed as decoys, distractions. A grim plan, but a practical one, and Lucy steeled herself to be assigned to the group most at risk, which of course she was. Easily expendable – not a dwarf, no one’s kin, along on the Quest half by accident.  
It was nothing short of a miracle that they all reached the forges alive, Lucy’s eyes skipping from face to face to account for everyone, Kili and Ori and Bilbo and Dwalin and Bifur and everyone else, because by now she couldn’t stand to lose any of them, really. It was a miracle, a miracle which Thorin promptly chose to gamble, without consulting anyone else – which Lucy supposed was his right as a king, but as someone who wasn’t strictly his subject, she would have preferred to find a deep, dark hiding place instead of ducking behind a pillar as dragonfire roared past to light the forges. She ended up with one sleeve in flames, Bofur tackling her to the floor to smother it so forcefully that she cracked her head against the stone and saw stars.  
“Alright, ye’re alright,” the toymaker gasped, breathless from exertion and fear as he patted his hands over her non-scorched parts to make sure he’d smothered it all. “Don’t fancy charbroiling, do ye?”  
Lucy shook her head as he clambered to his feet backwards, drawing her up with him. Her skin smarted, from the simple sting of a flash of heat or something worse, she didn’t know. Dori was similarly singed, his elaborate silver braids blackened at the ends. No one was taking inventory, though, all scrambling to obey as Thorin shouted orders. Lucy found herself in some kind of storeroom, passing Balin jars as needed, the dwarf chuckling a little madly as he dashed the contents into crystal containers that looked, to Lucy, like crude grenades.  
She was more or less correct, and the flashes of light added to the chaos of cacophony and firelight and panicked shouting. She caught a glimpse of Kili being dragged forward by his brother and followed them for lack of any better plan or hope, emerging in yet another great gray hallway, where Smaug was crouched, unaffected by the grenades. She quickly found herself conscripted into gripping a massive metal chain alongside the princes, unsure what Thorin had in mind or how she could hope to move the heavy links of metal to any effect.  
In the end, the chain did move, but that was to no effect, either. Smaug rose from the gold like a gilded nightmare, winging out of the Mountain and across the lake as they stood defeated, and helpless to stop him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know the alphabet trick is somewhat hokey, but it has served certain of my acquaintances quite well and remember that my incarnation of Kili hasn't been around the block an awful lot.  
> Also, sorry if the dragon part seems rushed, but I try to avoid doing a point-by-point recap of canon you already (probably) know when I can.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things get tense and a little awkward in Erebor as the armies arrive and the Arkenstone remains unfound. More hurt, but with comfort this time. (Unfortunately, no smut this chapter.) Also, we finally learn how Lucy ended up in Middle Earth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: feelings of hopelessness and despair, mentions of injuries, beginnings of mental illness (gold sickness). I think I'm forgetting one, sorry. Comment if need be.

“We should go,” Kili said, when the initial shock had passed, when everyone had made their way down to the floor of the Gallery of Kings. “We could fight with them!”  
“We would die with them,” Thorin said grimly. “There is nothing to be done.”  
Any further discussion was overridden by the entrance that Smaug had broken through collapsing entirely. The clamor of stone was deafening, the dust that arose choking. They quickly moved back to the forge, hands fisted in sleeves or collars or shirtbacks for the comfort of feeling another in the darkness and swirling dust.  
Lucy found herself anchored to Dwalin that way – her fingers wrapped around his belt, his hand bracingly heavy on her shoulder. “Let’s have a look at this, lass,” he said grimly, tears at the gritty air making tracks down his cheeks as he caught her heavy coat at the shoulder seam, the cloth tearing easily at the tug of his fingers, the shirt underneath ripping with it.  
Her arm was burned, but nowhere near as badly as she would have expected, due to the insulation of thick Laketown wool. Lucy felt almost dizzy with relief – sunburn-pink skin, a smattering of white spots that she knew would rise into blisters. Hot though Smaug’s fire was, she’d been extinguished quickly enough to spare serious damage. Dori was being tended by his brothers, the scorched hair quickly trimmed away; Bifur and Bofur fussing over Bombur’s arm, burned similarly to Lucy’s; Balin and Fili inspecting a red mark along Thorin’s jawline where the fire of his coat had licked at him. Kili was watching, gripping the muscle above his wound to try and quell some of the pain, but he noticed Lucy looking over and gave her a relieved nod.   
And she quickly looked away again, because she wanted to hug him and hide her face in his neck and check on his leg wound and curl up against him and wrapped around him and she couldn’t do any of that, for a variety of reasons. The absolute least of which was anyone else noticing.  
It was short work to pitch their camp in one of the storerooms off the forge, once the faster and uninjured among them had been sent back up to the hidden door for the packs, and even shorter work to get everyone’s burns slathered in the appropriate ointment from Oin’s replenished kit. He also half-wrestled Lucy out of her jerkin to tend to her back, which still required a daily application of Beorn’s salve – much better than thrice or twice daily, but still annoying and humiliating, especially when there was no privacy, and therefore no way to hide that she was still injured and couldn’t tend to it herself. It had been immeasurably better in Laketown, where she could just grab Oin or Dwalin as breakfast broke up and take care of the whole business quietly and privately.  
She ended up perched shirtless on a stool by the high table in the middle of the room as everyone bustled around – thankfully, for the most part, too distracted to even notice the procedure. Ori was being fussed over by Dori, Fili and Kili sitting quietly with their brooding uncle, so she had nothing to distract herself with.  
“What’s that?” she asked Oin as he worked, spotting a series of oddly regular scars on his wrist as he reached around her for the salve jar.   
“My wife,” he said, the fear and tension going out of his voice at the two words. He moved his hand back into Lucy’s field of vision. She studied the runes that she couldn’t read. “We brand our spouse’s names on the hammer-hand, when we marry.”   
Lucy looked around, curious. Everyone’s wrists were usually hidden by sleeves, but Laketown had had only men’s clothing to offer the dwarves, and the hasty tailoring had left much to be desired. Oin had rolled his sleeves up to work on everyone’s wounds, and so only now had there been opportunity to notice the mark.  
Others who noticed the conversation drew their right sleeves up for Lucy to see – unmarred skin, or a proud set of runes. Balin had a name, but Dwalin did not. “Still a bachelor, Dwalin?” she teased. The warrior grunted.  
“Dwarvish lasses outnumber the lads two to one,” Balin informed her, amused by her interest even in light of the situation, because she obviously didn’t know it to be slightly imprudent. Lucy was always carefully polite, unless she wanted to make a point. “Only some of us care to marry – many of the rest are craft-wed, like Dori.” The silver-braided merchant nodded in confirmation. Literally married to his work – that would have made Lucy laugh at any other time.   
She found the information about the sex ratio interesting, but not very surprising – a long-lived population, such as dwarves, with their lifespans of centuries, tended to support an imbalanced ratio between the sexes, to prevent easy overpopulation. The surprising aspect was that the males outnumbered the females; female was nature’s more usual default setting.  
“What happens if you remarry?” Lucy asked, cringing as Oin rubbed salve into the deepest rend in her skin. “Do you put the new brand above the old?”  
“There is no remarrying,” Oin explained from behind her.   
“Not even if someone dies very young,” Balin said, gripping his wrist, and Dwalin squeezed his shoulder, Lucy quickly averted her gaze, sorry that she’d asked Oin anything in the first place.  
“What about your wrist?” Kili asked, having wandered over to get away from the maudlin mood in Thorin’s corner of the room. Lucy looked down at her left in surprise. She’d half-forgotten the shiny pink weal; usually, she just noticed the ink she’d had tattooed on top of it.  
And her stomach cramped painfully even as it lurched. “I – I bumped it on a stove,” she lied quickly, stammering because of the shock and horror of her realization. She wasn’t very good at lying on the spot, not when her gorge was trying to rise. Oh Mary he was trying to –   
“Funny spot for that,” Ori observed, trying desperately to join the conversation to escape Dori. Lucy cringed, and Dwalin quickly wrapped his fingers around her wrist, hiding the offending scar. Dori scowled at his brother’s indiscretion and boxed his ears. “What?” Ori bleated, shocked.  
“You’re right,” Lucy said in explanation, screwing her eyes briefly but tightly shut. “I didn’t bump it. Someone else did it.”  
And given the previous topic of conversation, those who were listening quickly understood her sudden nauseated expression, and busied themselves with anything that they could.   
It was a very grim night.

 

They awoke the next morning at an indeterminate hour, as the sunlight could not reach the storeroom. Bilbo ventured out to see if Smaug had returned, but if so, there was no hint of him at all. He returned to the storeroom for directions back to the hidden door, and made his way there and back to report that Laketown was clearly on fire, but Smaug was just as clearly dead, half-submerged in the lake with his wings and spines jutting above the waterline like the wreckage of a massive ship.  
The news brightened the atmosphere considerably, and the dwarves grew happier when they emerged from the Mountain to see the sight for themselves. Lucy couldn’t really believe it – the whole scene was so small with distance that she could obscure it from view by lifting her hand before her face at arm’s length. It seemed as impossible as the very existence of a dragon.   
Then again, orcs and skinchangers and wizards and dwarves and elves had all once felt as thoroughly unreal, and she’d adjusted to that. Eventually. Mostly.  
And the death of the dragon seemed almost inconsequential when she wondered how many had died before he was killed. Bilbo seemed to share her thoughts, his face a picture of concern as he stared down at the strange vista.  
The trek back inside was considerably merrier. Bombur and Bofur ransacked several kitchens to see what could be scared up for a feast, finding that only a few dry stores had been untouched by mice or mold. They began cooking as everyone else packed up the cramped camp in the forge storeroom and relocated to the rooms in and around the massive halls where the treasure lay.  
The treasure itself was as dumfounding as the dragon. Lucy hadn’t more than glimpsed it the night before, distracted as she had been, but now she saw that the gold formed a veritable ocean, studded liberally with gems and other precious metals, statues and other large works rising from the drifts of coin like rocks from water.  
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Balin asked proudly, making Lucy jump. She’d actually just been thinking that it was vaguely unsettling, bordering on disturbing, to see so much wealth so concentrated, and it was no wonder Thorin’s grandfather had gone barking mad. Even considering that it belonged to a nation and not an individual or a family, she didn’t like it.  
“Very,” she lied, and quickly hurried over to the campfire to ask Bombur how much longer breakfast would be.   
After they ate, Thorin made it explicitly clear that their task now, Mountain reclaimed, was to locate the Arkenstone amid the rest of the treasure. The suggestion was dizzying – even if the gem was the size of a house, Lucy couldn’t foresee them finding it any way besides luck. It would take decades to go through all of the riches that lay around them – perhaps a century or two, even, and that may not have been too serious a problem for the dwarves, but for her . . .   
They began to work after lunch, fanning out over the treacherously unstable slopes in no particular configuration. With so few to search and so much to search, there was no point attempting any kind of method.  
Kili allotted himself a break around midafternoon, excusing himself to the water closet to his brother and instead seeking out Lucy among the dunes. He found her not far from the door leading to the hall housing their camp, apparently on a break of her own. She was standing beside a walkway that rose as high as her waist above the tide of gold, methodically stacking coins into an elaborate pyramid. He crouched on the walkway to survey her handiwork.  
“Bored?” he asked lightly.  
“Disheartened,” Lucy replied, glancing up at him. He looked happy, and no wonder. Ancestral home reclaimed without a single fatality (excepting whatever tragedies had occurred in Laketown, but she doubted much would be made of that debacle in the dwarvish history books), dragon dead, treasure on all sides. “There’s too much to look through.”  
“Does that have anything to do with your secret reason for coming along?” Kili teased, dropping to sit on the walkway with his legs hooked over the edge.  
“Yes,” Lucy said, only half to his surprise. “I’ll never find anything in here. It’s insane that I even thought I could – I don’t know what I was thinking. Erebor was a nation of its own, more than a city, and how I thought I could search even a city, I have no idea.”  
Lucy stopped. Frustration had brought tears to sting behind her eyes, and she rarely cried, but her back and her burn hurt and she was tired, and soon to be alone, and she’d been a fool to foster hope about this monstrosity of a glorified cave. And probably a fool to tumble the dwarf sitting before her, because she could feel an effect taking hold.  
“I could help,” Kili suggested readily. He’d seen Lucy in distress more than he’d have liked, but this was the first time he’d seen tears caused by anything but physical agony, even if they were quickly blinked away. “I’d be happy to help,” he added, as she opened her mouth to deny his offer. He could see the refusal in her eyes, in the stubborn angle of her jaw.  
The earnestness of his voice tugged at her heart. “Maybe,” she allowed, just so she wouldn’t hurt him by turning him down flat. She couldn’t tell anyone – without Gandalf’s corroboration, they’d think her crazy – but she couldn’t do it alone, either.   
And trust was a dangerous thing, even if Kili believed her. Faulty. Always crumbling at the edges. A terrible gamble. Lucy knew the nature of risk, knew how to weigh the potential gain against the potential loss, understood how the odds were stacked, and they were always stacked against the person doing the trusting.   
Pleased by the compromise, Kili reached around the coin-pyramid and picked up a necklace laid out on the stone. “This is pretty,” he said, drawing the piece onto his lap to study it more closely. Dragon’s breath opal, delicate white gold fittings on a filigree chain of the same. She had a good eye, he noted, glancing at her other selections where they lay on the walkway. Especially for someone who’d had no training in forging or jewelry, although for all he knew she did, and that was one of her innumerable secrets.  
Lucy glanced up to see what he held. It was pretty – and as she’d learned only this morning, her general distaste for sparkly things was not all-inclusive. She liked jewelry well enough, had the piercings to prove it, but gaudiness did not appeal to her.  
She hadn’t really expected to find anything in the gold heaps that was beautiful in the more understated manner that she preferred. There were absurdly large pieces, of course, and the majority was like that: oversized, heavy, overbearing, encrusted with diamonds or rubies or emeralds or other gems she didn’t know the words for. A few things, which she had rescued from the anonymity of the golden ocean, were understated. Simpler.  
“I thought so,” she agreed, eyeing the necklace.   
“Starting your collection, then?” Kili asked, tickled at the idea. Lucy was so practical, under the pranks and jokes, that he could hardly imagine her wearing anything she’d picked out.  
Lucy looked up from her coin pyramid, taken aback. “What?”  
“Picking what you want,” Kili said, surprised by her surprise. What else was she doing with the small array of treasure laid out so neatly on the walkway’s edge? “One fifteenth of this is yours.”  
Looking around at what little of the massive hoard could be seen, Lucy blanched. She hadn’t realized the magnitude of that, either, when she signed onto this undertaking. Recovering, she shook her head. “I’m not taking those things,” she said, glancing at the opal necklace.   
Frowning, Kili picked up another of Lucy’s selections, a very fine silver rope with tiny pearls woven into it. It was unfinished, meant to be incorporated into some other piece or work, but lovey as it was. It slid over his fingers as finely as a silk cord, and he had an almost irresistible urge to braid it into Lucy’s hair. “Why did you pick them up, then?”  
“Because they’re too pretty to stay lost in this insanity,” Lucy replied, kicking at the loose coins underfoot so that a number of them scattered, clinking and ringing merrily.   
“You should take them, if you like them that much,” Kili pressed. Everyone else had already chosen a thing or two for themselves, from sticky-fingered Nori to steadfast Dwalin. It was like water after a drought; all dwarves loved precious gems and metals, and the refugees of Erebor, and their descendants, had long gone without.  
“They’re not mine to take,” Lucy said firmly, a mystifying statement, and then sighed at Kili’s blank look. “These things were made by dwarves, for dwarves. It’s part of your culture, your heritage – I can’t take from that. I’ll take whatever part of my share I can carry out of here myself, in coins or scrap.”  
What she could carry out under her own power would be a pitiful amount, Kili reflected, even making an allowance for her startling strength, and that didn’t even address the really unsettling part of her statement.   
“Some might agree with you there,” he acknowledged slowly, trying to think ahead of himself as he spoke. “I don’t.”  
Lucy kept stacking coins. Kili was biased – her friend, she could acknowledge that much, at least. One more person for her to visit during her endless trek back and forth across the world.  
“You suffered, for this Quest,” the prince continued. “You bled for it. You starved for it, in Mirkwood. You risked your life for it. You felt dragonfire for it, even briefly. You have as much a claim to anything in this room as any dwarf, and perhaps more so, because you volunteered to come when many of our own stayed safely behind in Ered Luin.”  
Lucy paused in her coin stacking. “I’ll pick a token,” she decided, after a moment. “When it’s all said and done.”  
“What kind of a token?” Kili asked, glancing over the pile.  
“A small one,” Lucy said, touching the stud in her nose. “Don’t you wonder why none of these match?”  
“I thought it was just your taste,” he said, and Lucy laughed. He grinned, pleased.   
“No, they all have a reason,” Lucy explained, rolling her eyes.   
“Interesting,” Kili said, and he slid down off the walkway to get a second look at the jewelry, which of course placed him closer to Lucy, who smirked because he wasn’t good at pretense at all, so he gave it up and just kissed her, chuckling at himself as he did, Lucy smiling against his lips. She knew she should have turned her cheek, or shifted away, but she’d be alone soon enough. How much more attached could she get to him, really, in the next week or so? 

 

Ori was sketching when Lucy found him, unsurprisingly. He’d done little else in his free time, since their arrival. “What are you up to?” she asked, crouching beside him.  
To her surprise, he seemed shy. “Drawing,” he said, which was obvious, and added, “For you. I know the elves took the other sketches I gave you, and when you leave, I don’t want you to forget us.”  
“I wouldn’t,” Lucy said, touched. She could hold most of the dwarves at arm’s length, fond of them though she was, but this kid hit her right in the heart. Too much like Peter, she guessed. She’d been spending less time with him, since the Woodland Realm, hoping the affection/pain would lessen, but it didn’t feel like it had, not when he looked up with those brown puppy-dog eyes. “Thank you, though, I’ll be happy to have them. However, I need your help with something else as well.”  
Ori dropped his charcoal eagerly. “Anything,” he agreed quickly.  
“Never agree to ‘anything’,” Lucy warned, but she gave him a hand up.  
Kili had planted the idea in her head, earlier, when he suggested that he could help her find what she sought amid the treasure, but she didn’t favor him for the job. Ori, though, was a steadier sort of person, thoughtful, well-educated, and he’d been so attached to her right from the start. Lucy couldn’t think why she hadn’t enlisted his help earlier. It didn’t even feel stilted or awkward to ask, although she felt indebted, and knew she’d feel so all the more once Ori had done any research.  
“I’d like to tell you a story,” she began, when they were seated in two of the dusty, moth-eaten reading chairs in what Ori said was the Great Library. It certainly had books enough for the title.  
“Alright,” Ori replied, immediately agreeable, if somewhat confused.  
“It’s a strange story,” Lucy continued, watching him closely. “You can’t interrupt. It may seem to you like the delusion of a madwoman, but you must remember that you know me quite well. Have I ever seemed mad to you?”  
Ori, to his credit, thought carefully. “No,” he said finally. “A bit odd, at times, but never insane.”  
Lucy smiled at him, too relieved to be amused by his honesty. “Alright. Remember that.”  
It had been hard to find a place to begin, the first few times she tried to tell someone what had happened to her, but practice had by now supplied her with a relatively easy starting point. “I was born in a city very far away from here,” she said. “A city with towers of glass and steel, paved in stone.”  
Ori was frowning already, doubtless wracking his mind for any memory of such a city from his readings.  
“It’s a cruel place, like you might expect from that description, but I was happy there. I had a home, and a family, and a few friends. I had good, honest work, and I attended the university. I was going to be a physician in a few years’ time, one of the youngest, and I was proud that my work would pay off.   
“Sometimes, when my work and my studies allowed for it, my friends and I would go north, to the mountains about a day’s ride from the city.” She wasn’t going to try to explain cars, not now. “We would go climbing, mostly on the sheerest cliffs.” Ori’s face was screwed up in confusion, so she explained, “For fun. We wore ropes and hammered anchors into the rock to keep from falling. And it was a challenge, I’ll admit. I learned to fight with my hands when I was twelve, and after eight or so years, that came to me like breathing, even new techniques. I’d been throwing knives and stars almost as long . . . Climbing mountains like that was a new way to push myself.”  
Ori nodded, so she went on, “As I said, we mostly stuck to cliffs, but one of the times we went, we’d heard there were caves nearby. It was a new part of the mountain to me, and I wanted to see them before we left for home. On the day we were supposed to leave, I left a note for my friends and set out early, so see what I could find.  
“I found the caves. It wasn’t hard. I had a helm, to protect my head during climbs like miners wear underground, so I decided to explore. I really shouldn’t have gone very deep by myself, in case it collapsed, but I’d never seen caves before. I couldn’t keep myself from looking around a little, and I forgot myself and followed the passages back, deeper underground, just to see how far they went . . .” Lucy, remembering, shook her head at herself. It was one of the few times in her life she’d done something genuinely stupid. “I didn’t think I was lost, but soon I saw this light ahead, and I thought either I’d come back to the first cave, open to the sun, or come out somewhere else on the mountainside.   
“I hadn’t. When I came up on the light, I saw that it wasn’t the sun. It was water – or it looked like water. Gandalf calls it ‘the anomaly’, the elves I’ve spoken to call it ‘the portal’. When I touched it, it felt like, like –” Lucy shook her head. “You’re not often in the forge, but you’ve seen someone make wire, right? How they start with soft metal on one side of a plate with a tiny hole, and pull the metal through the hole, drawing it out long and thin?” Ori nodded, and Lucy said, “I was the metal, but I snapped back together instead of staying drawn-out, and I must’ve snapped back pretty hard, because the next thing I remember, I was awakening to the footsteps and talk of orcs echoing through the caves.”  
Ori looked, by then, understandably confused, and Lucy picked at a loose thread in her chair. “I’m sure you’re trying to figure out where my home city of glass and steel stands,” she said quietly. “You won’t. It’s in another world. The bright water was an anomaly, Gandalf thinks, where two worlds briefly butted up against one another. The elves call it a portal, because it carried me between the two. It brought me here.”   
The young scribe looked somewhat pale. “If you think I’m mad,” Lucy said thoughtfully, “please don’t tell Thorin. I’ll be leaving soon enough.”   
“I’ve never read about anything like that,” Ori said, and then gave his head a little shake. “I’ve never read about that.”  
“I promise it’s true,” Lucy said quickly. “I’m not crazy, Gandalf will tell you when he gets here.” If. Wherever he was. Whatever had happened to him.  
“But – but –” Ori looked around, a little wild-eyed. “I have to read,” he declared, leaping to his feet so suddenly that he almost bowled into Lucy. “I have to – where’s the catalogue in here, oh, Mahal –”  
Lucy watched him hurry across the room, astounded, and then quickly joined him. “I asked you because I can’t read Khuzdul,” she explained as he rattled through the parchment catalogue cards in their tidy drawers. “And you’re so well-read –”  
“Not that well-read, apparently,” Ori said, eyes a brown blur as he skimmed cards, dropping them back into their slots with care despite his hurry. “I have to see – I’ll start with the oldest records first, there’s nothing of that kind of event in recent history, or people would talk, you know – the records from before Thror’s rule are at the back, hold on –”   
He worked through the rest of the evening, until Dori came looking for him to get to bed. He found his youngest brother in the library, unsurprisingly, surrounded by books. More surprising was Lucy’s presence. The human was perched cross-legged on a stack of books the general dimensions of paving stones, diligently studying a children’s primer of Angerthas. The sight made his spine stiffen, because it really wasn’t at all proper, Lucy learning anything more about dwarves than she already knew (he still wasn’t happy about the Iglishmêk, though nearly everyone else had accepted it by now). And she knew it, too, snapping the book guiltily shut the moment she noticed him.  
Ori had to be physically dragged from the library, whining all the way to his bedroll. Dori could only anticipate that he’d repeat the routine every night – so many precious old books were to Ori what honey was to bees. Dori eyed Lucy suspiciously, though, as they reached the camp, the human slipping out from under his gaze without meeting it. Her, he’d have to keep an eye on.

 

The days took on a fairly bleak pattern fairly quickly – search for the Arkenstone during the day, later and later into each afternoon, until Thorin allowed them to stop. The free time in the evening was spent trying to make several small rooms off the treasure hall livable, and little else. Thorin turned from his usual grudging, dutiful manner to impatient, irritated moods. His people began to feel it, and Lucy was all too happy to avoid the darkening Company by holing up in the library with Ori. He didn’t dare teach her any Khuzdul, but she still helped him by running for books whose titles he wrote for her on scraps of parchment, comparing the runes, by the faulty light of a lantern, to book after book on the shelves until she finally found the one they wanted.  
Not being fond of mountains, caves, darkness, or the eerie presence of tons of rock overhead, Lucy took to sitting outside when she could, beside the hidden door which now stood open at all times. Bilbo joined her often, fretting over Thorin’s moods and their effect on the other dwarves even though he knew there was nothing for either of them to do about it.  
They watched Laketown smoke and smolder in the sunshine, during those brief respites, and it was on the third day that the birds arrived: the thrush, which was wise like Beorn’s animals, and an overlarge raven. Lucy more or less expected it to be wise, too, but she still felt a terrible shock when it opened its beak and spoke. Bilbo’s reaction was hardly any better – he startled so violently that he tumbled from the rock on which he was perched.  
Hearing that the raven bore a message from the Elvenking and the new Master of Laketown, the human and the hobbit underwent a brief argument about who should wait with the birds and who should go for Thorin. Somehow Lucy lost – damn Bilbo’s cleverness – and ended up ducking back into the Mountain, jogging through the chill and echoing halls. (Kili kept telling her that it would be a great and lovely placed when it was refurbished and full of dwarves, but she only half-believed that possible and she wouldn’t be around to see it, anyway.)  
She found Thorin literally knee-deep in gold, though how the weight of it didn’t crush his legs, she didn’t know (she’d dropped a golden goblet on her own foot the day before and was still surprised it wasn’t broken). Dwalin and Balin were both working nearby, as the king’s cousins were the best at handling his now-unpredictable temper.  
Once the raven had been reported, everyone trekked up to the door to see and hear it. Lucy found the birds still present, thankfully, Bilbo watching them nervously as they partook of the water he’d poured into a dip in the rock for them.  
Upon hearing the news of the elves and humans bound for the Mountain, Thorin ordered them all back inside, and a fortifying wall built at the main gate Smaug had bashed through. Lucy, Ori, and Bilbo were conscripted into carrying water and food to the rest of the Company, so they could work without stopping to get the absurd task done. They slept in shifts for the next four days.  
“Do you feel a bit like you were standing on solid ground, and a landslide has begun under your feet?” Lucy asked Bilbo when the wall was finally complete, late into the night of the fourth day, dawn and all its potential disasters approaching.   
The hobbit nodded, paler than usual from stress and fatigue. He’d been nursing a cold, on and off, since Mirkwood, and Lucy felt compelled to check him for fever and make him soup. “All the Master has been said to want is money to rebuild the town.”  
“Which was our fault, anyway,” Lucy agreed, the words painful – physically painful, lancing through her heart and the parts that already ached, her back and her burned arm and her head where it had hit the ground in the fire-smothering. People had to have died, in Smaug’s attack, and whether it was their fault for waking the dragon, or for failing to kill or waylay it, there was no way around the matter.  
Bilbo sighed as he reached the small room he’d claimed as his own. “Goodnight, Lucy,” he said. “Or should I say good morning?”  
She smiled, but her heart wasn’t really in it. 

 

The armies arrived bright and early in the morning, the unlucky dwarf on watch quickly summoning them all to the wall. Looking at the wall with several hours of sleep in her system, Lucy couldn’t believe the dwarves had built the thing in four days, but her amazement was quickly derailed by the proceedings. It was a relief to see Bard evidently unharmed by the dragon attack, and not looking at all like a grieving father (so surely Sigrid, Bain, and Tilda were fine, too), let alone acting as the new Master of Laketown, and a relief to feel the brisk mountain breeze on her face, even if it whipped stray strands of hair that had fled her braid into her eyes.  
She wasn’t as pleased to see Thranduil, but she couldn’t see much of him at this distance, and he didn’t speak, anyway. Bard did, and he was more than reasonable in his demands – money to rebuild, and additional recompense for the event occurring in the first place (pain and suffering, was how Lucy immediately termed it).  
Thorin, unfortunately, was not. He was, in fact, so unreasonable that even many of his kinsmen looked uncomfortable, Dwalin and Balin sharing a quick, darting look between them that Lucy only glimpsed by luck and could not interpret.   
Her shock and confusion and exhaustion and everything else from the past several days coalesced into anger, and she stepped into Thorin’s path when he made to go back inside. “Give Bard my share of the treasure,” she said, lifting her chin, which was not wise when facing down a king, but it happened on its own, and she was too angry to care. “If you won’t make this right, I will.” She’d known Thorin to be almost cruelly duty-bound, but not foolish.  
He glowered at her, drawing himself up so the few inches she had on him seemed fewer. “Step aside, Miss Bell.”  
“It’s my share,” Lucy contested, her heart pounding angrily. She could feel her pulse in her scars, and the spot on her left hand where she lacked a pinky ached. “I choose to give it to Laketown in recompense. You can’t tell me what –”  
“Step aside,” Thorin growled, with enough stone in his voice that virtually anyone else would have obeyed, and it sent a tremor through Lucy’s resolve, but she stood her ground, so that Fili and Kili had to yank her out of Thorin’s path before their uncle did something awful. He stormed past fuming, and no one pursued him.  
The princes were so obviously and deeply disturbed that Lucy let them fuss over her a little, Kili in particular. She was so angry that she shook with containing it, and couldn’t say a word to get them away from her, if she’d wanted to, without unleashing more vitriol into the already-toxic air. “He’s not like that,” Kili said, frowning hard as he rechecked the bandage on Lucy’s arm, though there was no reason for it. “I’m not excusing him, but –”  
“It’s the Arkenstone,” Fili muttered, gripping Kili’s shoulder. “He’ll be alright once we find it.”  
And Lucy and Kili both wanted to believe him, Lucy for the princes’ sake, but she remembered too well what little she’d heard of Thror, mad as a cuckoo towards the end of Erebor’s days, and wandering the world a lunatic after. That kind of thing tended to run in the blood.  
“Come on,” Fili insisted, clapping Lucy on her unhurt arm. “Let’s go throw rocks.”  
And the three of them did, climbing up to the hidden door and facing away from Laketown and the camped armies that were now officially laying siege, throwing small rocks at larger rocks until all of them were spent. They sat down amid the stones and lichen to rest before returning to the fruitless search for a gem that Lucky had begun to suspect would not be found in her lifetime.

 

The library was eerie, even to a dwarf born underground – dim and smelling slightly dank, the shelves towering far, far overhead like watchful monoliths, seeming to stare down at him. Kili wondered if they’d intimidate him less if he’d been a more bookish sort of person.  
But he could see the yellow lamplight glimmer up ahead, between the shelves, and hear the murmur of voices so faint that they sounded like the scratch of mice feet over stone. Lucy and Ori, just as Nori had said when Kili asked. Spending evening after evening in the library, bent over dusty old books that Lucy couldn’t even read.  
He’d been worried that she was avoiding him – which she had been, a little, but he didn’t know that, and now it just seemed that she was busy. Doing whatever it was they were doing.  
Coming around the last shelf between him and the light, Kili paused to survey the scene. The lamp cast a pool of yellow light, in which sat his friends: Lucy lying on her front on the floor, a large map spread out before her, and Ori sitting in a reading chair that sent up puffs of dust when he shifted, whispering as he read aloud from the massive book on his lap, translating into Westron as he went.  
“Hullo,” Kili said, because he didn’t want to eavesdrop. They both jumped. “Sorry – I just wondered what you’re doing.”  
“Reading,” Ori said helpfully.  
Lucy was oddly quiet, her eyes bright with reflected light as she looked down at her map again. Kili sat down beside her, a little amused, despite everything, to see that she was looking at it upside down. “‘The Southwestern Diamond Mine’,” he read, leaving out the orientation that denoted the depth in the Earth the map showed, because he didn’t know how to translate that to Westron. “What are you doing with this?”  
“Just curious,” Lucy said. Ori made a little choked sound, and Kili looked up at him with a frown. The scribe hid behind his book.  
“This is about your secret, isn’t it?” Kili asked Lucy. “But Ori knows.”  
The glare Lucy sent the youngest member of the Company was lost to the book cover still concealing his face from view. “Yes,” she allowed, and sighed.  
Kili looked around with renewed interest, titles stamped into book bindings catching his eye – The Deepest Reaches, Beyond the Mines, Wonders of the Mountain. There were mining books, records from the reigns of kings long dead, curiosity books, texts on magic. “You’re looking for something,” he realized, and saw Lucy wince. “I’m sorry – It’s just, I could help.”  
Ori made another noise. Lucy sat up this time to frown at him. “It’s just – he could,” Ori said fretfully, abandoning his shield. “I can’t go into some of these places with you, Lucy, the rock could have gone bad over the years – and I don’t care, I’m not scared, but if I did go, Dori would find out, trust me, and he wouldn’t let me help you by so much as reading a book’s title for you!”  
Lucy considered that. Dori was a dreadful mother hen, clucking and tutting about their nights in the library just because he suspected Ori of teaching Lucy Khuzdul. If she dragged his baby brother out into the far reaches of the empty kingdom, around whatever ‘bad rock’ entailed, he’d have her skinned, and Ori locked up for his own safekeeping.  
Kili was relieved and a little nervous to see her considering gaze shift to him. Things were bad, lately, and getting worse, and he’d welcome any distraction. Especially if he could help Lucy, who needed it and deserved it, whom he desperately wanted to help. He wanted other things from her, too, more and more keenly, but it was beginning to seem that Laketown had been some kind of a lark after all. And that was fine, he supposed, but he’d have liked to know going into it . . .   
Just as he would have liked to know what he was going into now, when he nonetheless agreed to accompany Lucy into the deeper recesses of the Mountain.

 

They first descended the next evening. Lucy held her lantern high, trying to force the darkness ahead to recede, but it didn’t. The tunnel yawned before them like a great black mouth. A chill breeze arose from its depths like a breath, raising every hair on Lucy’s body as a shiver went down her spine. She hid her unease, focusing on not tripping on the uneven floor. She hated the dark, though she’d had no problem with it as a child. She’d been an adult when she learned about the nastier things that hid in it.   
They walked without speaking for a long while, the walls featureless around them, and finally opening into the mines. They searched the nearest branches of the place for an hour or two, fruitlessly, carefully consulting the markings Ori had made on the map, before Lucy sighed that they should turn back to get some sleep before morning came.  
“What are we looking for, if I may ask?” Kili asked as they turned back, the silence threatened to pop his eardrums.  
“We’re looking for something that looks like water,” Lucy said, relenting only partly. “Water with light behind it, the way it looks when you look up through it at the sun.”  
Kili had had rare occasion to see water that way, as dwarves preferred to remain above water, but there was a shallow creek behind his mother’s house in Ered Luin, and he and Fili used to dare each other to lay on their backs in the current, submerged, to bear the cold and the inability to breathe, and he’d looked up through the clear water often enough, even if the last time had been when he was younger than Ori. “Alright,” he said, frowning. “Is it a stone?”  
“No,” Lucy said firmly. “It’s not a thing, really, nothing you carry away – when I saw it, it was upright, like the ground had become the wall, and the water was pooled against it.”  
The image that description gave rise to thoroughly unsettled Kili, and he felt a shudder of his own. “Why would water do that?”  
“I said it looks like water, not that it is water,” Lucy replied, feeling tired. She really didn’t like it down here, the darkness seeming to constantly encroach on her lantern light, their footsteps and voicing echoing hollowly, the wet mineral smell. She didn’t like trying to tango around the truth so that Kili knew enough to help her, without trusting him with the whole story. She couldn’t – one way or another, she was leaving soon, and she couldn’t attach herself to any of the Company any further than she already had. Stupid to tumble Kili . . . stupid to sit with Ori while he sketched . . . stupid to trade stories with Bifur . . .   
“So, you’ve been here before?” Kili said, trying to make sense of their search.  
“No. I saw the . . . water-thing somewhere else.”  
“Then how do you know there’s one here?” he asked sensibly.  
“I don’t.”   
At her hollow tone, Kili stepped up to walk beside her instead of behind – this first tunnel was wide enough for it, although the others hadn’t been. To his surprise, Lucy gripped his hand in hers, tightly. “I’m sorry if I’ve been – hot and cold,” she said. “It’s just all been very tense, hasn’t it? Things have happened fast.”  
“They have,” Kili agreed, relieved. He adjusted their hands so their fingers were laced together. “And I didn’t want to assume anything, after.”  
“Good of you.” Lucy kept her eyes on the ground so she wouldn’t trip. “I appreciate it – and that you aren’t driving me up the wall with questions. I know all of this must be maddening.”  
“It’s not, actually,” Kili said, a little surprised to realize that he hadn’t worried about Thorin in hours. “Secretly hunting a secret secret is a very welcome distraction.”  
Lucy smiled, and it wasn’t until he was lying in his bedroll, listening to Fili snore, that Kili realized she hadn’t said a word about their understanding (which wasn’t really an understanding, because he didn’t understand what she wanted of him), and that he didn’t know what she could possibly want with an impossible pool of very bright not-water.

 

For another three days, they searched. Mines. Catacombs. Passageways so old that they had been forgotten on maps of Erebor made within the past two centuries. And there was nothing.  
On the tenth day inside the Mountain, Lucy woke up early to leave – although it would have been more accurate to say that she had been lying awake most of the night. She couldn’t search the entirety of this place with just Kili and Ori to help her. She had imagined that Gandalf would be here to help her, when she signed up for this, that they would walk through the dark places together, his staff alight to hold back the shadows, held ahead and aloft to sense out the kind of energy emitted or absorbed by the anomaly they sought. They had done it before, years ago, and more than once.   
And the dwarves needed Gandalf, too, before the situation with the Woodland-Laketown army got any more out of hand. It seemed difficult to imagine it getting worse, but with Thorin the way he was . . .   
The sooner she found the wizard, the better off they all would be.  
She announced her intentions over breakfast, when everyone was just finishing the last of their meal, feeling more or less full and more or less optimistic about the coming day. Even better, Thorin excused himself early to go to the hidden door and see what news, if any, the raven Roac had to share.  
Fourteen pairs of round, startled eyes fixed on Lucy at her declaration, Bilbo’s included. “But you can’t go,” Ori said, the first to speak, and his tone one of fear as much as hurt.  
“We need Gandalf’s help,” Lucy said firmly.  
“That is neither here nor there,” Balin said. “We are under siege.”  
Lucy didn’t understand. “I know you are. That’s why we need Gandalf.”  
“Not us folk ‘we’,” Dwalin interjected, frowning. “All of us ‘we’.”  
She stared at the old warrior for a moment, stomach slowly sinking. “I beg your pardon?”  
Bilbo could have told them that Lucy reverted to nicer manners the more put off that she was, but there was no prudent way to do so, and Bofur charged in with his good intentions. “Aye, they’d shoot ye full of arrows as a pincushion before ye made it halfway down the slope,” he said, frowning in concern. “And then be sure ye’re finished off.”  
Lucy stared at him.   
Interpreting her stillness for continuing confusion, he went on. “They mean to starve us out.”  
“Bofur,” Kili interrupted, watching Lucy’s face. She looked, terribly, a bit like she had when she stood in Ori’s place to be whipped by the goblins – eyes blank and distant, the muscles around her mouth and nose just noticeably pinched. He understood perfectly well, from the distance she’d kept between them, that he wasn’t wanted as a lover, but he still considered himself her friend, still searched the recesses of the Mountain with her every night, still tried to make her laugh, though it was an increasingly daunting task.   
“Thorin told us he sent the ravens for our folk in the Blue Mountains and the Iron Hills,” Dwalin reminded her, and everyone else. “They may reach us in time.”  
Lucy stood, too quickly, her camp plate almost spilling off her lap. She caught it at the last moment, handing it carelessly to Bilbo because he happened to be sitting beside her. She was gone in the next second, not quite running, but striding off directionlessly with a lantern swinging dangerously in her hand.  
No wonder everyone had been so miserable. It wasn’t just Thorin growing ever-closer to the border of insanity, it was that they were all hopelessly doomed to die. Even if no army breached the Mountain, the armies would keep holding them all under siege, and they would starve out before the other dwarves reached them. Or one of the armies would breach the Mountain, and would kill them all, and easily . . . Lucy knew of a dozen excellent places to hide by now, had even stashed what she could in a few, in case Thorin went totally off the deep end, but what good was hiding, for any of them, if it would only lead to starving that way instead, alone and in the dark.  
She ended up at the subterranean lake she and Kili had visited the night before in their searching, hurling rocks larger than was prudent to lift in her condition into the inky water with no care for the monsters her imagination had conjured beneath its glassy surface just the night before. She threw rocks, and screamed more than a little, and wept more than she screamed, although she only realized the last when she slumped down against the wall gasping for breath after the exertion of rock-throwing, and for pain after it had torn at her back, and even then she only noticed the tears because she tasted salt.  
She had struggled and fought so hard, all these years, to stay alive. To stay alive so she could get home. She could not get home, and now she would not even stay alive. She should have taken Gandalf’s advice to her in Bag End, should have found a good, simple man who’d love her without pressing to know her past, whose children she could bear to fill the void her old family had left. She could have done it, easily, could have found some genuinely kind, incurious farmer or miller, maybe a Ranger because she herself was so prone to wandering, and maybe after a decade or two she would have been happy. She could have stayed with Beorn, when he offered, could have settled there, settled for platonic companionship and the simple joys of gardening and beekeeping, although their individual and shared histories would have ached, occasionally, caught up between them even when they didn’t speak of the past.   
Peter would never know what happened to her. She wouldn’t be buried beside their grandfather and their mother. She would forever be lost, disappeared, spirited away.  
Kili found her at around that point, placing his lantern next to hers (which had miraculously avoided being smashed or knocked over in all of the screaming and throwing) and sitting beside her on the gravelly ground. It was wildly uncomfortable even to him. He wondered how she stood it.  
“I know you probably don’t want me,” he said, squinting over the water, “but Dwalin thought he’d say the wrong thing and Dori wouldn’t let Ori down hereabouts.”  
Lucy’s mouth twitched in the smallest possible ghost of a smile. “Bilbo?”  
“He said he had to do some thinking,” Kili explained, freeing his runestone from his pocket to turn it in his fingers so the lantern light rippled over its surface.   
Closing her eyes again, Lucy sighed.   
“What are you thinking?” Kili asked quietly. He could only guess that she was afraid to die, but that hadn’t affected her so powerfully before, all the other times that they could have died on this Quest.  
“Just before you got here, I was thinking that it isn’t really so different now than it was before,” Lucy said tonelessly. “With the orcs, I mean. I tried so hard to stay alive, you have no idea – praying when I could bear to, sometimes forcing myself to keep breathing, one breath at a time when I had to, because I believed that if I could just make it one more breath, one more heartbeat, one day I’d be home again. It would all be worth it. Anything that happened to me. It would be worth getting home.   
“And now, for all of that, for every breath and heartbeat and tear and every drop of blood, for all of it, I’m going to die just the same way as I would have if I’d just given up then. Alone under a mountain. And my brother will never know, Kili, he’ll always be looking out the door, wondering, waiting, hoping, praying, that one day he’ll see me walking up the path again.”  
Kili gripped her leg so hard that her eyes opened, shocked, and he realized he’d grabbed onto her like she was another dwarf, without moderating his strength, in his need to convey the depth of his feeling. He relaxed his grip. “You are not going to die alone,” he said earnestly, meeting her eyes. “You have all of us.”  
Lucy closed her eyes, shook her head. “None of you know me.”  
“We know the important things,” he insisted, his fingers tightening again despite himself. His other hand caught her cheek, making sure she was looking at him. “I do. Mahal, Lucy – I know what makes you smile, and laugh, and I know you love your brother more than anyone else in the world, same as me, and I know you mix jam into your oatmeal and never salt your food and I know the funny look on your face that means Thorin’s pissed you off and you’re biting your tongue, and I know what you look like when you feel good, and when you’re hurting, and I know your voice when you speak or sing or mutter so you don’t think anyone can hear you, and I know about your scars and your nightmares, and I know you’re the cleverest person I know, and I know you’re the strongest person in this Mountain, and the bravest, even more than Uncle or Dwalin, because you’ve been through worse than any of us and you’re still here, and still so good, and clever and funny and kind, and just . . .”  
Exhausted, he let his head fall forward to knock against hers. “You’re my friend,” he concluded, and it felt anticlimactic. “Or whatever else you want of me.”  
And that was the moment that he realized it had all been a declaration of love, fierce and true and a little afraid, witnessed only by the still black water under the Mountain.

 

Lucy was quiet for a painfully long time. She knew she was crying again, weeping really since it was all tears and no sobs, and that Kili could tell, because he’d slotted their faces closer together, almost a kiss, and his cheek had to be wet from pressing against hers.  
She’d done a terrible thing. She’d taken great care not to grow too attached to anyone in this world when she could help it, but had never worried about someone else growing too attached to her.  
It sounded like Kili was. He hadn’t said any of the hallmark words for it, but what he had said, and the tone of his voice, and the unmistakably tender way his hands bracketed her head and neck . . . thumbs along her cheekbones, middle fingertips brushing her ears, smallest fingers above her fluttering pulse.  
And there was no point in resisting anything, anymore, not if they were all dying. She believed that she wouldn’t die alone, with even this one good friend beside her, but that wasn’t really what she wanted from Kili.  
She wanted to hug him, and hide her face against his neck, and check his leg wound even though he’d begun caring for it himself, since they arrived here, and recheck it after he worked hard or walked far, and listen to him sing in that lovely baritone with her ear against his chest so she could feel it, too, and yes, have sex with him, shockingly good sex, and to sleep the whole night through with him after because she could, because she didn’t have to separate them for the sake of keeping an emotional distance that was simply too costly to maintain anymore.  
“How do you take your oatmeal?” she asked, her voice as light as it could be with screaming and crying still clinging to its edges, and Kili laughed – a beautiful, startled, and startling laugh, a relieved laugh.  
“I can’t stand the stuff,” he replied, joyfully, and Lucy smiled against his shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about my failure to update for however long it's been. Work has been chaos - like trying to keep footing in a landslide. :)


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The search for the Arkenstone and resulting incident with Bilbo, the preparation for battle - and oh, right, the smut. There's some of that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: oral sex, penetrative sex, still-kind-of-injured sex, some body insecurity in a sexual context, mild violence, mental illness (Thorin's gold sickness), premeditation of violence (regarding BO5A).

            It was better, after that. Still not good, with death and destruction looming ominously ahead and their leader more unstable by the day, but better. And if, in the smallest hours of the night when he was half-asleep, in the very darkest and deepest back corners of his mind, a tiny, scared voice whispered Lucy was only with him out of fear of dying alone, Kili reasoned that it didn’t much matter, because it was unfortunately likely that some or all of them would be dead by the time the whole matter of Erebor was put to bed.

            Although, of course, outside of those deep, dark corners, in the daylight hours, there were no whispers, and no doubt at all in his mind that they’d all come out the other side of this thing romantically battle-scarred but otherwise quite alright.

            Fili knew, of course. Even with everything that was going on, Kili couldn’t keep the stupid grin off his face whenever Lucy looked his way. “Oh, Mahal, no,” his older brother groaned when he first witnessed said stupid grin, the very next day. “Brother, tell me it isn’t what I think.”

            “That depends on what you think,” Kili replied, grinning, and because they were far enough away from anyone else to go without being overheard (including Lucy, probably, because he wasn’t terribly good, yet, at gauging the reaches of her keener human hearing), he continued casually, “But if you think we’re courting, then yes, it is what you think.”

            Fili’s mouth dropping open was so comical a sight that it was worth Lucy looking up sharply – oops – especially as few and far between as humorous moment were, these days. She seemed to agree with Kili on the matter, though, grinning at Fili’s expression. She even gave them a little wave before getting back to her work digging through coins (Thorin had found them all shovels), making it clear she wouldn’t deal with the fallout of his choice to confess.

            There was no lecture, though, until the princes were in their bedrolls for the night. Dwalin, uncannily canny as ever, had managed to shoehorn Kili into the room he officially shared with his brother, and not the one that he’d like to share with Lucy, so long as no one but Fili noticed. The old warrior had been their arms instructor, when they were dwarrows, and had been a near-constant presence about the house even before then, because of his longstanding friendship with their mother and uncle. He knew Kili and Fili almost like his own sons, perhaps even better than Thorin knew them, in some ways, because he was not blinded by any expectations for them. And that all meant that he knew when something was afoot, even when he didn’t know what.

            “Are you awake?” Fili hissed.

            “Do I snore?” Kili rejoined, a little impatiently, because he knew what was coming.

            Fili shifted. “Half the time you don’t even when you _are_ asleep.”

            Kili sighed. No hand in a forge, not particularly skilled with an axe, patchy beard (although the patchiness wasn’t very noticeable, since he kept what facial hair he did have shaved close for the archery), the archery . . . and now he learned that he didn’t snore, either.

            “Say whatever you want about me, but keep a civil tongue about Lucy,” Kili warned.

            “I was going to,” Fili whispered harshly. “Mahal, Kili, it’s not that there’s anything wrong with either of you. It’s that it just won’t _work_. Do you think Uncle will approve? Mother?”

            “For all you know, it’s just a few tumbles between friends,” Kili sniped back, although it wasn’t anymore. He could see the change in Lucy’s eyes, hopefully not just because he wanted to – there was something there, an openness, and she didn’t guard herself so carefully. He could hear it when she spoke without thinking first, could see it in the way her shoulders relaxed when they were alone.

            “I know you,” Fili snapped back. “It’s _not_ a tumble between friends. You’ve had only four lovers, Kili, you don’t take to it lightly!”

            That was true. The younger prince was known around Ered Luin as something of a flirt, but that was only because he was charming and friendly and funny; he swaggered when he walked and smiled too much (the last only if Thorin was to be believed). He laughed easily, and teased everyone, and winked, and complimented old ladies so they chuckled or clucked like hens and gave him whatever baking was handy (he particularly liked the jam cookies Dori, Nori, and Ori’s mother made). But for all of that, he could count the number of times he’d been _interested_ in someone on both hands, and yes, Fili was right, the number of times that the interest had come to fruition could be counted on one.         

            “So you just think,” Fili warned, “what will happen if we all live, Mahal allowing.”

            “ _When_ we live,” Kili corrected stubbornly, “I will deal with what comes.”

            And they didn’t speak again until morning, although neither fell asleep for quite a while. (When Fili did fall asleep, Kili listened to him snore somewhat enviously.)

 

 

            The next day was a long one, spent in useless searching. Lucy continued making her little piles of things too pretty to be lost in the masses, splitting her time between working beside Kili, Ori, Dwalin, Bilbo, Bofur and Bifur . . . the last helped her improve her Iglishmêk beyond what she’d learned in jail. With Ori, she quietly discussed new areas of the kingdom that she and Kili could feasibly search. With Bilbo, she played hobbit memory games. With Dwalin, she didn’t discuss much. And with Kili, she had to move on quickly to different company, because the urge to either kiss or laugh was powerful. Kissing was off the table for obvious reasons, and laughing sounded much too loud in the vast, echoing hall. Doing so, even muffled, gave Lucy the uncomfortable worry that Thorin might come bearing down on them for daring to have fun while everything went to pieces around them.

            Like trying to keep footing in a landslide.

            But, with the help of Fili playing interference on Dwalin, Kili and Lucy did end up in the same room at the end of a night wandering old mineshafts, teasing and touching, trading awful jokes about cave exploration. They were kissing the moment the door closed behind them, Lucy giggling a little. “What?” Kili asked, grinning against her lips.

            “Remembering that stupid thing I said about your ‘pickaxe’,” she mumbled back, and he snorted in his effort to keep his laugh quiet – inelegantly, right into Lucy’s face, but she didn’t mind.

            It was a small room, identical to the others all down the row that the Company now occupied, but they all shared the benefit of containing beds. Kili had been mystified as to the reason until Balin explained that the massive hall containing the treasure wasn’t usually a treasure room, but an antechamber to the royal areas of Erebor – the courts, the throne room, the living areas, and so forth. The rooms they occupied, tucked up under the many walkways and staircases, had originally offered rest to dwarves who had journeyed to see the king – some coming from the far side of the Mountain, a two-day trip, and needing respite while they awaited an audience.

            So, while it was cramped and plain and still, impossibly, dusty (Lucy had begun to suspect the ventilation grates of coughing the stuff into the room, as often as she’d wiped down the very walls with a damp rag), it did have a bed (also stubbornly dusty) and a slightly rusted old brazier.

            Kili was particularly glad for the bed, because anything they did would have been made doubly complicated by trying to keep Lucy’s back and arm from hitting unforgiving stone. “How are your wounds?” he asked as she wiggled away from him to start a little fire in the brazier. She’d felt slightly chilled from the first moment underground, a feeling shared by Bilbo, if no one else. “The burn? Your back?” He sat on the bed to test the mattress, bouncing a little.

            “Better every day,” Lucy reported lightly, even though the burn was particularly painful. She’d always hated burns worst, even little ones from cooking. Between a burn and a whipping of equal magnitude, she’d probably, impossibly, have chosen the whip.

            “Bofur said you hit your head,” Kili added, trying not to fuss, and Lucy smirked a little as the tinder caught.

            “That’s fine, too,” she said, rolling her eyes at him, even though she didn’t really mind. “Do you want to feel the bump yourself?”

            “The _bump_?” He couldn’t keep the alarm out of his voice.

            “It’s the same principle as a bruise, Kee,” Lucy said, amused. She tugged the tie from her hair, shook it out, and then slid his hand into it, fitting the curve of his palm against her skull. “See? Not bad.”

            Kili shook his head. “That’s – that’s not right,” he said uncomfortably. A _bump_. “Has Oin felt this?”

            “No, not important, humans get them all the time,” Lucy said, and then grinned. “He hasn’t felt everything you have.”

            Kili chuckled even as he grimaced. “I’d hope not,” he said, placing his other hand on Lucy’s hip, almost cautiously. She pressed into the touch as his thumb rubbed over the arcing bone, and after a moment she climbed up on the bed next to him, because standing up while he sat made too large a height difference for kissing.

            “Are you very tired?” she asked, planting kisses along the line of his jaw.

            “Hmm,” he said mock-thoughtfully, and Lucy laughed and slapped his shoulder. “No, I guess not. What did you have in mind?”

            “Well, first I want to check your wound.”

            Kili laughed, surprised. “ _Really?_ ”

            “You’ve been working hard, and no one’s been taking care of it for you,” Lucy said, getting her fingers into the laces of his trousers and tugging them open. “God knows how bad you’d let it get before you said anything.”           

            The prince was still chuckling as he lifted his hips to help Lucy with removing the trousers, largely because she was looking up at him through her lashes in a manner _very_ unlike a healer usually did.

            “Have you been putting the poultice on?” Lucy asked as she unwound the bandage.

            “Every day,” Kili replied. Obedience to healers, if no one else, had been drummed into his skull early on in life.

            Lucy studied the wound for a moment, noting some relatively fresh blood that probably came from the physical exertion of building walls and shoveling mountains of gold. There was no sign of infection, though, and no torn or popped stitches. Kili had been taking better care of himself than she had expected him to. Relieved, she kissed the ragged center of the stitched line, where the flesh had been ripped by the arrowhead, and pressed her cheek against it.

            Kili ran his fingers through her hair, admiring it in the firelight, and feeling privileged for the gesture she made. He couldn’t imagine her sharing that kind of tenderness with just anyone, and it made the center of his chest feel tight and soft at the same time.  

            “This could have been so bad,” Lucy sighed, and then drew back. “You’ve taken good care of yourself.”

            “Do I get a reward?” he quipped, and she laughed.

            “What do you want?” Lucy rejoined, kissing the inside of his thigh as she smirked up at him.

            “Well, first I’d like to check your wounds,” he teased, repeating her words, and was surprised to see her glance down, effectively hiding her expression behind her eyelashes and his knee. “Or not,” he added lightly. He’d like to know the state of things, for practical reasons and because he still sometimes saw the immediate aftermath of then goblins’ work in his mind. It would be a relief to see it healing.

            “Oin saw tended them this morning,” Lucy said, digging up a smile before she looked up again. “Healing right up. Now, what about that reward?”

 

 

            As good as they were at distracting one another, neither Lucy nor Kili was immune to the worsening state of things under the Mountain. Every day, the humans and elves camped on Erebor’s doorstep grew more impatient. Thorin grew even more unpredictable. And they found still nothing, in the deepest reaches of the Mountain’s roots, that resembled the anomaly Lucy sought.

            “What is it?” Kili asked on the twelfth day.

            “What’s what?” Lucy asked back, frowning at a fossil in the damp tunnel wall before them. It was a school of small fish, long dead, the impressions of their bones distorted horribly by the contortions of stone over time.

            “The bright water,” Kili asked. He felt freer asking things, now that they were proper lovers (more or less), and Lucy was freer with her answers. “Why is it important?”

            Lucy turned from the wall to lean back against it, carefully letting just the upper regions of her shoulders touch, where lashes had been absent or were now closed over in new scars. Her eyes were widely dilated despite the lantern light, supporting Kili’s recent notion that humans could not see in the dark nearly as well as dwarves could, which had occurred to him because she tended to trip, in the dark tunnels.

            Fitting her hands behind her back to clasp them above her tailbone, a buffer to lean back against, Lucy sighed. _It’s a hole in the world, and I fell through one years ago. It’s impossible. It’s the cruelty of Fate made manifest._ “I wish that I could tell you everything, Kili,” she said, and the rue in her voice sounded genuine. “I can’t.”

            “Ori knows, though,” Kili suggested, sure to keep his tone level and patient. It wasn’t hard – he’d known Lucy to be like this since they met, and his mother had told him from the cradle that people didn’t change their natures (and especially not over less than a fortnight in tense surroundings).

            “Ori knows,” Lucy agreed, her eyes moving away from his face, over the slick walls, and he realized she expected him to get angry. “Gandalf knows. Elrond knows. Beorn, Radagast . . .” She sighed.

            The list made sense. Lucy was searching for something that sounded impossible, something the like of which Kili had not heard of before. Of course she’d sought wise counsel regarding the matter. Odd counsel, granted . . . Kili wasn’t particularly wise, but he couldn’t imagine what the not-water really was, if it was such a serious secret.

            “I’ll tell you other things,” Lucy offered. It was a stopgap measure, but one that had worked before, when someone who liked her was offended by her secrecy. Someone that she liked enough, or needed enough, to want to mollify. Kili had that status now, for better or worse. “Ask.”

            Kili shook his head, rubbing his thumb over her cheekbone, knuckles pressed against her jaw. “Don’t tell me anything you don’t want to.”

            “I _want_ to tell you everything,” Lucy replied, her eyes darker than usual because they were still nearly all pupil, wider than usual with some anxiety he didn’t understand. “That’s not the problem.”

 

 

            The next day was the worst yet, since Smaug destroyed Laketown. They were all drawn from sifting through treasure by a horn blast from the front gate, and quickly scaled the wall to see what news the messenger bore – that an embassy was coming to greet them with new accords.

            “Don’t worry,” Lucy told Bilbo, who looked pinched and a little waxy. “They must be offering a new agreement. Maybe it’s less money, and Thorin will agree.”

            The hobbit gave her a tense, nervous smile. “Perhaps. Yes, that would be nice. You know, Lucy, you’re quite a good friend.”

            “You are, too,” Lucy said, meaning it, but frowning at the oddness of his timing. “Are you alright?”

            Bilbo was saved having to answer by Thorin, whose mood seemed much improved by the hail, which befuddled several among them until he declared, “That will be Dain. They will have caught wind of him coming.”

            And he shouted down that if the party was few in number and unarmed, he would meet it.

            Twenty or so soldiers approached, their ranks parting to reveal Bard, and a cloaked man bearing an iron-bound wooden chest. Lucy frowned down at the sight, confused, as Bard once again entreated the dwarf king to accept their terms for a peaceful resolution. Thorin declined, not too politely.

            And Bard revealed the Arkenstone.

            It was more beautiful than Lucy could have imagined, yes, but still just a big gem – the gasps that arose from the dwarves, at the sight, didn’t see proportionate to the sight. Lucy supposed that it was because of the cultural significance of the stone more than because of its appearance.

            Musing, she was utterly unprepared for Thorin to break off from his angry shouts at Bard to wheel on her, his blue eyes burning as he backed her into the side of the Mountain where the wall met it, or for his hand wrapped so hard around her burned arm that she saw white. “ _What have you done?_ ” he roared, giving her a hard shake that knocked her head against the stone.

            “I – I didn’t,” Lucy said, too shocked for composure as she blinked the stars out of her eyes. It took everything she had not to divest herself of the aggressor in her personal space, especially the hand on her burned arm – she could _feel_ blisters bursting under his bruising grip, but if she managed to get him off she wouldn’t be long for the world, she was sure of that. No one could strike a king and walk, subject of his or not. “Thorin, I didn’t!”

            “You should never have been allowed to come here,” Thorin snarled, pressing Lucy into the stone. “You were a traitor from the beginning, biding you time –”

            “I am no traitor!” Lucy shouted back, her anger snapping into place like armor. Her head came up so she could glare down at him, her spine straightening, and the muscles under his grip flexed.

            “Cease!”

            At the near-boom of the powerful voice, the stunned gaze of everyone on the wall went to the cloaked man below, holding the chest that bore the Arkenstone. He had thrown off his hood, revealing himself to be Gandalf.

            “You shame yourself,” he scolded Thorin, even standing twenty or so yards below them. “Unhand Miss Bell at once.”         

            Glowering, Thorin waited a pointed moment before he did so.

            Lucy refused to capitulate to the violence of a moment ago by rubbing her arm, although it was screaming at her like it had been set afire anew. Neither did she move more than a step away from the wall.     

            To the collective shock of the Company, it was Bilbo who stepped forward into the painful silence. “I took the Arkenstone,” he said, little chin raised.

            “ _You?_ ” Thorin wheeled on him, snarling, but wasn’t moved to more violence.       

            His explanation was succinct and almost elegant. Lucy saw the immediate sense, and was surprised that Bilbo hadn’t enlisted her assistance – but of course, the hobbit saw her working in the library with Ori, sparring with Dwalin, wandering the halls at all hours with Kili. He couldn’t have brought himself to divide her loyalties, good friend that he was. Or perhaps he didn’t believe that she could be trusted.

            And, with the stone that gave him the right to rule held by another, Thorin had no choice but to agree to sell it back, for Bilbo’s share of the treasure.

            The entire thing could have been avoided if he had let Lucy give her share freely the very first time the armies of humans and elves approached the Mountain.

            Bilbo tried to make a case for remaining a friend to the dwarves, but Thorin had none of it. “Take him, if you wish him to live,” he called down to Gandalf. “And no friendship of mine goes with him.” He turned on Bilbo, gruffly adding, “Get down now to your friends, or I will throw you down.”

            It was Lucy who first grabbed the nearest coil of rope, last used to aid in constructing the wall, and Bofur helped her twist it into something resembling a harness, which they packed Bilbo quickly into. He gripped Lucy’s hand, surprised to see it shaking slightly. “All will be well,” he assured her, although he hardly seemed sure of it himself. “Farewell!” he cried to the rest, as Bofur and Bifur passed him over the lip of the wall and began to lower him. “May we meet again as friends!”

            “You are not making a very splendid figure as King under the Mountain!” Gandalf called up to Thorin, obviously both angry and disappointed. “But things may change yet!”

            Lucy was not surprised to turn from the sight of Bilbo’s descent and be confronted by Thorin. His gaze was averted, his face stony. “What of you?” he demanded. “Will you go with your own kind?”

            It spoke to the state of things, lately, that she was surprised to be offered a choice. And for the first time in the chaos of Bard’s reveal, she noticed Kili. He was being bodily restrained by both Fili and Dwalin, although he was now standing still, and Dwalin’s forearm was jammed between his teeth to keep him quiet. She could see the pain of his divided loyalties in his eyes, and he jerked them quickly towards the armies, towards the camps of humans and elves, his gaze beseeching when it returned to hers.

            _Go,_ he thought. _Go, please go, be safe, I will find you when this is laid to rest._

            And she wavered in that direction, conflict written on her face. She could leave. Stay with Bilbo and Gandalf, if she chose to further trouble herself with this deranged and misguided venture, or leave the area altogether. Bard would grant her supplies, she was sure, though surely little could be spared, and she could find her way in the world. She’d been worse off than that before. She could find her way back to Beorn, or Rivendell, and rest to let the wounds inflicted by this journey heal – physical wounds or otherwise.

            But Ori was staring at her with huge eyes, shining with distressed tears. He wanted her to go, too, she was sure, and he had his brothers to guard him against what had yet to come.

            Bofur was worrying his hat between his hands, Bifur signing something hidden against his brother’s side.

            Dwalin was regarding Thorin with a grim gaze.

            Kili was still cutting his eyes at the army’s camp, and back to her, and in a horrible moment, Lucy knew she wouldn’t be leaving. It felt like an arrow in the heart. She couldn’t, she couldn’t leave any of them, couldn’t forget the reverent way Kili touched her scars, the warmth in his eyes when he looked at her, the way he smiled when they were alone, the words he’d said on the lakeshore. The patterns of his heartbeat and breathing were branded into her memory already, his various touches on her skin like invisible but indelible ink. There were too many memories now for simple comfort later, they were densely packed into the back of her mind, and wildly varied – his quick, clever hands juggling fruit at Beorn’s house, braiding Fili’s hair in the mornings, drawing back his bowstring, gripping hers; his smile when they woke up together, when he was laughing, when Thorin granted him some rare praise, when he spoke of his mother.

            Leaving him would create a rend in her heart that wouldn’t heal, like the persistent misery she felt whenever she thought of her brother, like the heartache of seeing her grandfather lowered into the ground, like the cry of her little-girl self, in the back of her mind, who still couldn’t believe her mother was dead. Some pains never went away.

            She couldn’t stand one more.

            It had been only a moment, perhaps two or three seconds, Thorin not yet impatient for her answer, but she had made up her mind. “I will stay,” she said, loudly enough for those on the ground to hear.

            “Miss Bell, I beg you to reconsider!” Bard called up.

            “I am decided!” she shouted down, moving to the parapet so she could see Bilbo and Gandalf squinting up at her.

            Kili managed to shrug off his brother and mentor as Thorin ordered the embassy below to depart, Bard returning Thorin’s parting threat of arrows with one of his own, reminding them that the payment for the Arkenstone was to be lowered the next day at noon.

            Kili had his arms around Lucy in the next instant. Later he’d be relied that Thorin had already stormed off by then, but at the moment he didn’t care. “You should have gone,” he fretted in a mumble, kissing her lightly.

            “I couldn’t,” Lucy said.

            “I would have found you later,” Kili insisted, drawing back to press his hand to the side of her face. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

            “I thought that ‘later’ may not be possible,” Lucy returned, hearing her own fear in her voice, and she forced it out of the next words. “If this all comes to nothing, we will both be fine. If it comes to battle – I would have been waiting for the news of who had died, and wondering if I could have saved anyone here had I not left.” _And likely unable to recover from the guilt and the loss._

            His sigh was short and pained, and he drew back another inch to gently knock his head against hers.

            When they drew apart, they were alone – the wall deserted, the field below empty of any emissaries. It felt, briefly, like they were the only people in the world, and Lucy felt a brief spike of panic as the moaning wind whipped across her face, wondering if this is how someone felt after battle, when so many lay dead.

 

            The day was spent shoring up the fortifications of the Mountain. All manners of ingress and egress had long been destroyed by Smaug, saving the small hidden door and the walled front entry. Speech among the remaining members of the Company was spare; all felt grim with the ultimatum hanging over their heads, with the incident with Bilbo causing feelings of anger and betrayal and shame and regret, with Thorin’s deranged plan in motion. He did not want to pay the sum named for the stone; he wanted to wait for Dain to arrive, hoping the other king could retake the stone by force, with no loss of the treasure required. No one was happy about it.

            Lucy hoped that the loss of life wouldn’t be too great.

 

 

            It was easy to end up in bed together, with no call for secrecy and Dwalin lacking either the heart or the motivation to meddle. Lucy simply grabbed Kili by the hand after dinner and led him away, to a few scattered and half-hearted chuckles at her boldness. Ori watched them go wide-eyed.

            “Are they –?” he asked, looking around for an answer.

            “What they are and what they do is their business,” Dwalin grunted over his bowl of stew.

            “But –” Ori was still mystified. “How –?”

            “She’s not that much taller,” Bofur pointed out with something like his usual cheer. “Good thing she’s a wee lass.”

            There was a ripple of laughter at Ori’s flush. “No – I didn’t mean _that_ ,” he protested, but everyone was too relieved to have something to be happy about, to laugh over, that his fumbled attempts at an explanation were ignored, except to be made more of for further teasing. The scribe finally subsided into embarrassed silence, hiding under Dori’s arm, and smiling a little. Kili and Lucy. At least _some_ of them were happy.

 

                       

            “We’ll catch some good ribbing for that tomorrow,” Kili gasped when he broke away from kissing Lucy to wrestle out of his shirt. “Oh – Mahal’s _hammer_!”

            “You always forget the laces,” Lucy laughed, tugging the ties apart so he could get the fabric off of his head, and left him to undress while she poked the little fire banked in the brazier. She turned around again to see him naked, her breath catching a little.

            Kili grinned, his usual cockiness only bolstered by her expression. “Like what you see?”

            There was a joke about Dwalin in there somewhere, reaching back to one of their first conversations, but Lucy couldn’t string it together. “Yes,” she said instead. “If given the opportunity, I could just _look_ for hours.” Every line of his body spoke of strength, sturdiness. He looked very _safe_ , not like someone she’d ever need to be afraid for, not like someone who would be easily harmed, even with the still-healing arrow wound marking his leg.

            “I’d look back,” Kili said appreciatively, watching her lose her boots and trousers in order just a little too short, but any loss in the show of stripping was more than made up for by all the pretty skin now exposed to plain view. He ran a hand up her thigh to the swell of her ass, still amazed by how soft her skin was. There was hair on her legs, he’d finally noticed, but it was impossibly fine, made golden in the firelight.

            “What about this?” he asked, running his hand up to the small of her back to toy with the hem of her shirt. She’d yet to discard it in their encounters, same as their encounters had yet to progress beyond hands and mouths. He lifted his gaze to hers, unsurprised to find that she’d been studying him in return. “Can we lose this, too?”

            The cringe was so slight he wouldn’t have noticed it if he didn’t know her, her eyes shifting away from his. “Never mind,” he said quickly, slipping both hands back to her ass. “I didn’t say that.”

            “No, it’s alright,” Lucy said, flashing a quick, almost nervous smile. He frowned, having never known her to be nervous. Afraid, defensive, tense, but never really nervous. “It’s just – don’t be – don’t be terribly disappointed.”

            “Don’t be foolish,” he retorted, fighting a scowl at the very idea. Who’d been _disappointed_ before him, to put that look on her face? “I couldn’t be.”

            “You could,” Lucy insisted, and Kili rolled his eyes in an attempt to make light of it.

            “I _won’t_ be, then,” he declared. “I _refuse_ to be disappointed!”

            It earned him a smile, not a laugh, but Lucy still gave him a little push so he was sitting on the bed. He sat obediently, understanding that it made things a little better if she felt a little less vulnerable, and drawing the blanket of her bedroll over his naked lap to help.

            “There’s a lot of scars,” Lucy warned as she carefully worked her burned left arm out of its sleeve.

            “Dwarves _like_ scars,” Kili reminded her, drawing more of the blanket onto his lap as she scrunched up the back of her shirt to draw it up over her shoulders, still careful with her back.

            “They’re not pretty,” Lucy insisted from inside her shirt, as she drew it over her head. It was tempting to remain safely hidden by the wool cocoon, or to drop it again, but if they were all going to die soon she didn’t want to deny Kili much of anything. And it was hot, besides, bandages and chest cloth and shirt all layered together. She liked being naked when no one else was around, it shouldn’t be so different with just one other person, one whom she cared for.

            “Should I not watch?” Kili asked, suddenly wondering if that made it worse.

            “You’re going to see everything one way or another,” Lucy said, trying not to sound resigned. It was not a total success.

            Kili kept his face fixed as the shirt came off, but there was nothing in sight that would have shocked him. Bandages he’d been expecting, of course, and scars, but neither were unsettling. The tattoos were a little bit of a surprise – the one on her wrist that he’d seen, on top of the burn scar that he suspected had a truly terrible origin; it looked like a word, though in what language he couldn’t imagine. There was another word just below the knob of bone at the base of her neck, which he glimpsed when she half-turned at the waist to work loose the end of the linen binding her torso.

            She’d taken to wearing her chest cloth under the bandages, lately, since the drag and shift of the layered cloth was less awkward that way, and her back was close enough to mended that it only spotted the chest cloth with blood occasionally. It was a relief to have a last layer in place when the bandage came off, because once it dropped to the floor, pretty much everything was in view.

            Kili stared. _Now_ he was surprised. There were scars, as he’d been warned, and they weren’t slight or shallow, but he hardly noticed them. “You’re so beautiful,” he said, his voice huskier than it usually was except after coming, and Lucy crossed her arms under her breasts, trying to cover the worst of the marks despite herself. It pained him, that she could face down Thorin in a blind rage, could face torture by goblins with composure, but not stand bare before a lover.

            He stood up without thinking, gently moving her arms back to his sides so he could see again – the gentle, curving lines of her stomach, the smooth ridges of muscle under the skin, the small silver stud in her navel that he compulsively wanted to lick and suck. And the scars were terrible only in what they spoke of – especially those that marched up one side of her belly and ribs, on his left and her right. They were all about the length of his palm and half the width, easily covered by the press of his hand, shiny-slick and silvery-pink like only old burns could be. The tapered shape suggested a hot knife. The arrangement and orientation suggested a methodical application.

            “Orcs,” Lucy said, her breath catching a little when Kili knelt to kiss the lowest, just over her hip.

            “Mm.” There was nothing to say that wouldn’t sound trite, or at least not that he could think of. He rose again to kiss her lips, and then the white, lancing scar that bisected her left collarbone and stopped just over her heart, the upper end of which he’d noticed before, when her shirts had a low cut. There was another scar around her neck, only noticeable now that he was looking for the things, a faint pink weal around her neck that suggested a rope. Orcs. He ran his tongue across it. “’S like a treasure hunt.”

            Lucy laughed unevenly, relieved and still on edge. “If you say so.” She pulled him back to the bed, hoping he’d be motivated to move on, but once they were sitting he kept it up – drawing back to skim warm, affectionate eyes over her body, finding a target, homing in on it. Her jittering nerves began to settle again, and she carefully settled on her back so Kili could make his investigations (but not of the worst, which was, of course, her back entire). The deepest scars were almost numb, where the nerves had been damaged, but the shallower ones were sensitive – like her piercings, which Kili also liked.

            “New favorite,” he mumbled against her belly, licking at the stud. She laughed, and he bit lightly to change the sound into a moan. “Aulë save me, you _are_ gorgeous,” he said warmly, sitting up to admire her again. His hands rubbed over her hips, unable to stop moving. “Back?”

            “I can stay for a minute,” Lucy answered, arching up a little to undo the clasp of her chest cloth and pulling it off.

            Kili’s fingertips dug in a little in a bid to keep from touching himself, the effort of which had increased steadily over the past several minutes. His cock was so hard it bordered on painful, the slit weeping, and neither of them had touched it at all.

            “Your breasts are incredible,” he said, almost a gasp, and Lucy laughed. “You’re blushing,” he added, a little smug even in his amazement. “You’re blushing right down to your navel!”

            “Shut up,” Lucy laughed, breathless. “I haven’t blushed in years.” She felt her face grow another few degrees warmer, though.

            “Definitely blushing,” Kili said, now definitely smug, and licked right up the midline of her body, from her navel to between her breasts, and turned his head to kiss the right. It was almost a giddy relief to see a part of Lucy’s body that had been spared harm (the inside of her right thigh was burned in exactly the same way as her torso, the highest scar horribly close to the last place you wanted anything that hot or sharp). Though he was sure she’d had been just as lovely with scars on her breasts, there were none, and the skin was so fragile he could see the pale blue course of her blood beneath it. The impossibly fine hairs trembled when he exhaled, barely visible, and so did Lucy, arching her back.

            “Sensitive?” he guessed, teasing, and she nodded, her eyes closed in what almost looked like concentration. Kili rolled the pad of his thumb over one nipple experimentally, and received a keening sound entirely disproportionate to the touch.

            “Harder,” Lucy ordered on a gasp, her hand closing around his so his fingers pinched, and her yelp made his hammer throb painfully.

            He kissed her other breast as he squeezed again, finding her nipple and sucking it between his lips. Lucy gave a sharp cry, quickly muffled by her hand, the other hand sinking into Kili’s unruly hair to keep him there, because if he stopped flicking the tip of his tongue over her, she was sure she’d weep.

            She almost did when he pulled off to gasp, “Can you come like this?” and responded by nodding, drawing him down again, because while she hadn’t before, it seemed suddenly and immediately probable.

            Kili latched on gladly, reaching up with the hand not teasing the other nipple to drag Lucy’s hand away from her mouth. With no need for secrecy, he wanted to hear every sound she made, and he bit lightly to that end. She _screamed_ , her breath coming harsh and fast, her legs wound around his ribcage to keep him there, as if both of her hands knotted into his hair wasn’t incentive enough, as if making her come with just _this_ wasn’t incentive enough.

            “So beautiful,” he gasped against her impossibly soft skin, slick from his attention. He ground down against the mattress without meaning to, desperate for any friction against his cock. “Mahal, Lucy, you’re lovely –” He switched to her other breast, moaning as he teased the nipple with his tongue and teeth, his fingers pinching harder than he’d previously dared on the other, and it was that or the vibration of him groaning that tipped Lucy gloriously over the edge, yelling his name. His cock throbbed at the sound, painfully, but he kept licking and sucking as she came down, coaxing a milder second peak out of her, and then drew back to pepper her chest with kisses, moving up to her neck and then face. Lucy laughed weakly, hardly making a sound, too breathless for it, and used the hand which seemed to be hopelessly ensnarled in Kili’s hair to pull him in for a kiss on the mouth.

            “Didn’t know that could happen,” he marveled when they parted to breathe unhindered.

            “Me neither,” Lucy answered, and let her eyes close. Kili rested his forehead against hers so he could see those eyes again when they opened, all pupil with the thinnest ring of green around the rim, half-gold from the firelight. “Need a minute. Can’t feel my toes.”

            He chuckled, moving back as she shifted, rolling onto her front with a little grunt as the pressure on her back grew too great. He was relieved to see the wounds almost, _almost_ closed, more of that lovely skin growing back. The scars underneath, the old ones, were stark white against the new pink stuff, and against the lightly tanned skin that had never been torn open. Kili kissed her shoulder blade, then the scar from when she’d been stabbed (or one of the times, at least, Mahal knew what she’d been through), and then followed one of the older whipping scars across her back with his tongue.

            Lucy smiled against the pillow she’d made of her arm. “Tickles.”

            “Mm.” Kili stroked his cock idly, the fingertips of his other hand finding more routes to follow that didn’t cross the still-healing parts. He hadn’t come, but his urgency was suspended. He felt oddly sated from Lucy’s orgasm. “Good?”

            “ _Very_ good,” Lucy corrected, feeling his hand come to rest just below the nape of her neck.

            “What does this say, if I may ask?” he asked, tracing the lines of the ink with his thumbnail so Lucy shivered.

            “It says, ‘I shall fear no evil’,” she replied. There was nothing about the reason being a god with her, because she didn’t always hold with that part, and her god was a goddess, anyway.

            Kili studied the unfamiliar letters curiously. “Does it work?”

            “Sometimes.” Lucy rolled onto her side, smiling at him. His breath caught a little – so fucking beautiful it made his heart hurt, for a split second, but maybe that was just fear of what could come, cropping up where it wholly did not belong. “You know, I get the funny feeling I’m forgetting something . . .” Her hand slid up his thigh.

            Kili chuckled. “I’ll take care of it.”

            “But I wanted to,” Lucy replied, tone as sultry as she could make it, sitting up and kissing him. “I had a _plan_ , you know.” Not really focused on the conversation, Kili made a questioning noise into her mouth. “It involved a hammer . . . and a forge . . .”

            She laughed as Kili began kissing her with renewed vigor, much muffled by his tongue in her mouth, and she kissed him back just as enthusiastically, surprised to feel his hand sliding into her smallclothes not to do away with them, but to stroke her folds, which were so slick his fingers slipped away from what they sought twice. “How do you like it?” he gasped.

            “Well, on my back is out,” Lucy replied, growing just as breathless as two of his fingers slid inside and _oh fuck, again, already, how am I –_ “So, I thought –” She groaned as his thumb circled her clit. “– I thought I’d ride you.”

            His groan against her neck was answer enough, and in a trice Kili caught her by the hips and rolled them around so she was sitting aside him, struggling to get out of her smallclothes without breaking the seal of their mouths, their tongues sliding against each other hot and wet as she finally got the cloth out of the way and off, flung carelessly to land wherever it would.   

            “You’re gorgeous, too, you know,” Lucy said, breathless, as she sat up to look. He was, all deep dark eyes and solid muscle and she ran her hands up his chest, fingers raking through the springy curls, to circle her thumbs around his nipples. He arched off the bed with a groan that sounded almost like pain, but that was an investigation for another time, when he wasn’t already rock-hard and leaking between her thighs, and she wasn’t so ready that she sank straight down and took him to the root, their bodies flush, all in one go despite years since anyone else had been there.

            “Ohholyfuckyoufeelgood,” she gasped all in one breath, and realized she’d spoken in English. Kili moaned at her voice anyway, his fingers seizing on her hips as his bucked up. “Wait, wait a moment, Kee, sorry –” Lucy rocked her hips experimentally, once, twice, but no, no pain despite the time, she was so wet it was amazing it wasn’t running down her thighs, just a deep, full stretch that was so good she was moaning a contradiction in the same secoond. “Yes, alright, go –”

            Any more words of encouragement died in her throat as Kili thrust up, the head of his cock bumping up against her sweet spot, shaft rubbing over her clit, and she lost the ability to form coherent thoughts, let alone anchor them to spoken words. She braced herself against his shoulders, biting her lip to focus on the little shard of pain so she could keep the pace instead of going completely boneless on top of him, which only worked for so long before Kili felt his own orgasm coming on like an avalanche and slid one hand off her hip to pinch her nipple again, and it was still so oversensitive that she came again, and Kili thrust up the last few times with her warm, pliant, soft weight on top of him, his teeth in her shoulder.

            It took what felt like ages for him to come down, spending pulse after pulse into the slick, tight heat, but finally, Kili’s every muscle went slack. He’d never once come harder, he was sure of that, or he was when he’d recovered the scattered fragments of his thoroughly fuck-addled mind. Turning his head, he pressed a kiss to Lucy’s ear. “Hurt you?” he asked, his words slightly slurred. She made a warm humming sound, which vibrated through her chest and into his, which sounded warm and tired and sated. He took it for a no, his eyes drifting closed. His last waking act for the night was shifting his hips so he slid out, oversensitive, and telling himself they could clean up in a bit, when everything wasn’t so soft and warm and sleepy.

           

 

            Lucy woke up first, giving a pleased stretch like a cat, and then a grimace as she felt the mess between her legs. Hopefully that wouldn’t cause anything too uncomfortable later.

            It had more or less glued her to Kili, so her movement woke him up when their hips peeled apart. He made a face even before his eyes opened, but he was grinning. “Can’t fall asleep without cleaning up again,” Lucy opined, amused, shifting to roll off of him, but Kili got an arm around her waist before she could follow through.

            “Couldn’t be helped,” he said. “We were both completely fuck-addled. And good morning.”

            Lucy laughed. “Good morning.”

            Kili looked around for any hint of the time, but the room was as dark as midnight, with the fire in embers. It was somewhat amazing that it hadn’t burned out entirely, since banking the fire had been thrown out the window along with cleaning up after themselves like responsible adults and not uneducated adolescents. “What time is it?” he asked.

            “Not time to get up yet,” Lucy said, making another bid for freedom, and this time Kili allowed it, the benefit of the loss being that he could watch her go. It suddenly amazed him that he hadn’t bitten that ass yet . . . impossibly tempting. “Or someone would have woken us.”

            “Very true,” he agreed, catching the wet rag Lucy tossed his way. He draped it over his lower parts as Lucy joined him again on the bed, her own wet rag in one hand and a waterskin in the other.

            “We’re probably dehydrated,” she observed, drinking.

            “It certainly felt like I spent an ocean,” Kili agreed, and laughed when Lucy sprayed water over half the bed with laughter.

            At that moment, there was a timid knock at the door. “Are you up?” Ori called.

            They two exchanged confused, amused looks. “Ori?” Lucy asked to confirm.

            The scribe sounded miserable. “Yes.”

            “Why did they send _you_?” Kili called as Lucy shook with stifled laughter. He worked his fingers against her ribs to make the task harder, grinning as she squirmed away from him.

            “To make fun of me,” Ori said glumly. “Just get up so I don’t have to come back, please?”

            “We’ll be out in a trice,” Lucy assured him, but between getting cleaned, re-bandaged, and dressed, it was actually several minutes before they joined the others at breakfast. Any teasing they would normally have gotten from the Company was reserved for another time, because Thorin was sitting at the fire and looking none too happy.

         Not that Lucy had ever seen him happy, except for the few moments surrounding the initial opening of the hidden door.

            They were all left largely to their own devices by midday, the wall in the entrance having been shored up as well as was feasibly possible, and Lucy found herself following the others back to the great hall filled with treasure. “What are we doing?” she asked Kili. He shrugged, nonplussed.

            “Arms and armor, lass,” Dwalin explained gruffly, lifting a shirt of gold mail from the sea underfoot. “The things we were given in Laketown are hardly worth scrap.”

            “And they don’t fit,” Bofur added. Bifur made a sign of agreement and drew an axe out of the coins like a like sword from a stone.

            Lucy looked down at herself, realizing that her trusty, sturdy, and impossibly still-in-her-possession jerkin wouldn’t fare well if things came to a head, and that by extension, she wouldn’t, either. It was custom-made and lightweight, but the layered leather and steel plates were much better suited to the quick skirmishes she was accustomed to than to true battle.

            “Ye’ll need somethin’ more than that,” Dwalin agreed, seeing her gaze.

            “But still light,” Kili said quickly.

            “Best get to work, then,” the old warrior prompted. “I’ll see to yer choices later.”

            Finding anything of practical use in the room seemed wildly unlikely. Gold was impossibly heavy – Lucy didn’t even consider any of it. And most of the armor in here was made for male dwarves, which meant that it would be utterly useless to her: too heavy, too broad, and quite possibly painful, if the weight combined with the shape to compress her chest the wrong way.

            “We’ll find something,” Kili said confidently. “Look at all this.”

            “Finding anything in particular in all this _is_ what worries me,” Lucy rejoined, and he smiled.

            Fili joined them after he’d found most of a full suit of armor for himself, finding possibilities in the pile that had to be rejected. Wrong weight, wrong shape, or decorative and impractical, too big in some ways, too small in others . . .

            It was the older prince who found the hauberk, catching sight of the distinctive white metal amid the gold and pulling it free with care. The piece poured free like water, fine metal rings clinking softly, and he whistled.

            Kili was at his side in an instant, holding up the mail to check the size, and then passing it to a curious Lucy. She turned over the almost-fabric, let it flow through her hands, marveling at the slight weight. “Silver?” she guessed, knowing she was wrong, but having no better idea to voice.

            “Mithril,” Kili corrected.

            “The most precious of metals,” Fili elaborated, crossing his arms. He wasn’t sure if something so prized should really be worn by someone other than a Dwarf. “Lighter than any other, brighter, and harder.”

            “Perfect for you, Luce,” Kili said, relieved to have found something suited to her. “Light and bright as you are. Try it on.”

            It was a decent fit, a little wide in the shoulders, falling to the elbows and knees. Lucy shifted her weight experimentally, not really able to believe that the metal had any real strength when it was the about same weight as her jerkin. Maybe it was titanium . . . that was hard but light, though she couldn’t be sure because if she’d ever seen titanium, she didn’t know it. Kili tugged the hauberk to fall right, pointing out the broad swath of diamonds that formed a decorative collar and provided additional shielding, wondering aloud if they could get a forge working to take it in in the right places, suggesting a belt. Lucy stood still, touching the diamonds at her throat and feeling a little dazed. _Diamond_ armor. And mithril, whatever it was, was clearly of high value. She was wearing something that belonged in a museum, something worth more money than she could guess, and she didn’t want to try.

            Fili relented as he watched Kili untangle Lucy’s hair from the net of diamonds across the backs of her shoulders, seeing the open warmth in his brother’s eyes as he touched the bare back of her neck. Lucy might be an outsider, might not even know what mithril was, or the worth of what she wore, but there was no more fitting garment to guard his brother’s heart.

           

 

            Once most of the needed armor had been accumulated, the dwarves took to the forge – not the massive one whose fires had been lit by Smaug, but a smaller one better suited to their purposes. Lucy perched on a barrel of iron scrap beside Ori, sweating profusely in the intense heat and watching everyone work, and watching Ori draw them. Occasionally, they were remembered by the others and a few words of conversation signed their way, but for the most part, they spent the afternoon unnoticed. It was far from silent – the cacophony in the forge was almost unbearable to Lucy, although Ori ignored it well enough, and she suddenly understood why there was a standard-use sign language alongside Khuzdul.

            Even with the heat and the terrible din, though, she didn’t want to find something else to do – not when Ori slowly, slowly leaned against her as he drew, until his head rested on her shoulder, and she could watch Kili’s intense concentration as he worked (though he was given only the smallest and easiest repairs, poor hand with a hammer as he was), and she could watch Bifur and Bombur bicker in Iglishmêk, and witness the otherworldly sight of Dwalin bare to the waist and shining with sweat and reflected firelight, looking like an illustration of the god Vulcan come to life. Thorin looked almost as fearsome, although he seemed steadier at his work than he had been in weeks. Every so often, Lucy got up to take the waterskin around, glad to understand Iglishmêk when someone asked her for food or offered a word of encouragement. The only thing missing was Bilbo perched beside her and Ori on the barrels, fussing about the effect of the oppressive heat on their constitutions.

 

 

            They were all awoken the next morning by the cries of Gloin, who had been on watch when he spied Dain’s army in the distance. The news was received with mixed feelings – their relief had arrived, but could not reach them without going through the elf-human army below. Nor could the elf-human army retreat. Lucy immediately thought of the situation as a Russian nesting doll of sieges.

            Thorin and Dwalin conferred only briefly before ordering everybody to ready for battle, just in the event that matters took a turn for the worse. Lucy was sure they would before the day was done; the outside air was so tense it almost crackled, as if a thunderstorm were brewing even though the sky was clear.

            She found herself staring for a moment at the mismatched bits of armor that had been found and cut down for her the day before. Its arrangement mimicked the lay of a prone body, or a skeleton. It unnerved her slightly.

            The Company congregated to suit up together, as the more experienced warriors could easily advise the less so. Dwalin himself went over each of the four youngsters with a critical eye at every step – first stripping down to smalls, so any lingering wounds could be tended anew, as battle could last for days, and bandaged with padding as thick as the lay of armor would allow. Oin tutted to discover Kili’s leg wound, fussing over the fact that he hadn’t been told, but he had to acknowledge Lucy’s handling of the matter.

            Second was wool clothing, which best wicked away the wet of sweat and blood, and what padding for the armor that had not been ravaged by mice or moths over the years. Lucy didn’t mind being worked over, in this particular instance, because she was helping others, too – doing up some buckle of Ori’s when Nori asked for a hand, drawing Kili’s laces tight, passing things along to others as they were asked for in all the tumult and bustle.

            Third was the armor, and of course the weapons, strapped and buckled and belted into place, snug but not tight, and Dwalin making sure everyone could move properly with it all one. Lucy felt light as a feather in her gear, which was disturbing, because there was no weight to confer a sense of protection. It felt like being next to naked. She had the mithril hauberk, steel graves and knee guards, and Kili had somehow found vambraces close enough to her size, in yet more mithril. The attached gauntlets, to protect her hands, had been hastily modified by Dwalin, who had muttered the entire time about the absurd gracility of human hands while he worked.

            She suspected that others had been conscripted into the work of finding so much armor that suited her, but she didn’t know to whom she was indebted, and didn’t want to know.

            Kili found himself staring, a little, as Lucy buckled her second gauntlet into place. The mithril set off her coloring to advantage – putting roses in her cheeks where the usually constant sunburn had faded under the Mountain, reflecting light into her already-bright eyes so the green was lighter, was more easily distinguishable from the catch-all word ‘dark’ that was so often applied to Kili’s eyes, too.

            “You look like a warrior out of legend,” he told her, tugging at a loose wave of hair that tumbled over her shoulder. He contemplated it for a moment. “May I braid your hair?” he asked, and not lightly.

            Lucy was surprised by the offer mostly because she realized she’d forgotten to braid it herself. She considered Kili’s uncharacteristically grave expression before she answered. In Rivendell, Balin had said that braiding was courting behavior, and she supposed the pair of them were, but Kili looked so serious that she suspected it meant more than just that. “If you’d like to,” she said.

            Kili took a blanket from the pile someone had set out for the very purpose he had in mind: cushioning the ground while Lucy sat and he knelt behind her. He had to borrow the comb from Dwalin, who to his surprise handed it over without even a dour look.

            The old warrior nudged his brother as the prince began working the comb through the little snarls that sleep had left in the very ends of Lucy’s hair. Balin followed his gaze, eyes widening. “They’re not just –?” he asked Dwalin.

            “Not if there’s braiding,” the other replied. “Hush. Don’ startle ‘em.”

           

 

            Once every knot had been worked out – and with far more care than Lucy took, herself, so she was leaning on her elbows with her eyes half-closed in relaxation, by the time Kili stopped – Kili began to braid, parting and sectioning off hair without consciously planning. Lucy really did have lovely hair: soft, fine strands that fell in thick waves down to the small of her back. He hadn’t realized, early on in the Quest, because it was always wrapped back into that single strict, spiky rope.

            He had a plan, hazy and unaddressed at the back of his mind, where it had been lingering and forming for weeks, but he was still amazed with himself to see it done. One braid called her beloved, and ran along her hairline as a band to keep stray wisps of hair out of her face, intertwined with one invoking Aulë for blessings of protection. He’d committed near-blasphemy and all but betrothed himself in the same fell swoop, and it was beautiful. Years of braiding Fili’s hair (which was deceptively stubborn despite the look of it) and practicing in yarn whatever pattern caught his eye had both paid off, and with interest. He’d never braided _beloved_ before – something that read more like _sweetheart_ , a claim to courting, but never _beloved._

            Thorin might actually murder him.

            Feeling that Kili had stopped, Lucy reached up to probe the unfamiliar bumps along her scalp. It felt very complicated, and was tidily held in place without tugging at the skin. He’d worked from left to right around her head, working more and more hair in as he went and pulling it up as he went, so every strand ended up worked in, and formed a heavy knot, so there would be no loose braid for anyone to grab – except the ones which originated under her ears and fell forward over her shoulders, very dwarvish braids that he needed to find beads for. Maybe his own, as he never wore them, but that would be pushing the bounds of propriety quite far even by his standards. Those two braids already marked her as belonging to the line of Durin. Beads would draw more attention to that.

            Lucy didn’t know what she was wearing, and there was no mirror anywhere handy, so she couldn’t pay any compliments beyond leaning back against Kili’s chest, her back spared any pain by the generous padding in the bandage, the chill of metal armor underground quickly chased away by his warmth.

            “Do I look like a dwarf?” she asked.

            “Mmm, very much so,” Kili agreed, kissing just under her ear. _Gorget,_ he tought; no one had been able to find Lucy a gorget, although every one of them was ragtag in their cobbled-together outfits, even Thorin. “It’s a very good look for you. Braid mine?”

            Lucy shifted, sitting up and turning. “I don’t know how,” she said regretfully.

            “I don’t care,” Kili assured her.

            “Let your family,” Lucy suggested, and then, because she knew that had to hurt, she reached for her necklace.

            “No,” Kili protested, immediately, his eyes going wide. “You need your goddess.”

            “She knows me,” Lucy said, undoing the clasp. “She’ll keep an eye on me.” _If she can, in this world._ “But you, I’m not sure she’d recognize.”   

            And she strung the chain around his neck instead, making sure the icon faced outwards. Kili wanted to help but knew he’d fumble the tiny object in his blunt callused fingers, so instead her lightly gripped Lucy’s wrists as she worked.          

            He kissed the inside of the left when she drew back, and then touched one of the braids along the side of her head. “Mahal’s got an eye on you, too,” he said, and the look in Lucy’s eyes was almost like amusement and affection combined, but warmer and deeper, and he hoped he was looking at her the same way, because for a moment it felt like everything was just fine.

           

 

            Thorin ended up braiding Kili’s hair, with the exception of a small one worked in by Fili.

The latter was lopsided, crooked, loose at the end and too tight near his scalp, predictably, but otherwise it wouldn’t have been his brother’s braid. They exchanged relief at Thorin’s quietude in small glances, glad that he seemed his usual old self, hoping he would stay that way after. If there was an after.

            Fili’s braided brows shot up to his hairline when he spotted Lucy. “Sister,” he greeted her, and she gave him a curious, confused kind of look as she settled against Kili’s arm around her waist. “Kili’s marked you one of us,” he explained, nodding to her braid. “You didn’t tell her?”  
            Kili shrugged, feeling himself blush a little. The chiefest reason the braid was improper was that he hadn’t . . . asked, or told her. It was stupid to declare one’s intentions with a braid when the one addressed couldn’t understand the language, but it had seemed more honest than words, more genuine and sincere, when anything said aloud in these circumstances would sound false and overwrought.

            Lucy was wide-eyed, still confused as she ran her fingertips over a braid – not the one under discussion, but that drew Fili’s attention to it, and his brows, impossibly, cinched another degree higher. “What did you write on my head?” she asked Kili lightly, a bid for humor to hide the sudden sting of tears behind her eyes. Blessings from his god, and family ties . . . it felt like being hit in the chest, a kind of intensity hardly indistinguishable from pain. Or maybe her heart was just so battered it couldn’t tell the difference anymore.

            “All kinds of things,” he quipped, assessing her uneven tone and deciding to reply to the humor. “The rude jokes are in the back.”

            “Ass,” Lucy accused, but there wasn’t quite a laugh in it, and she was still blinking too often, so Fili abruptly decided to excuse himself.

           

 

            For some time, the ravens only reported that the armies below had reached an impasse, and that certainly looked to be the way of things. The lure of the Arkenstone became too much for Dain’s people around midmorning, and light skirmishes broke out wherever the forces butted against one another.

            The sight of darkness to the North put a quick end to that. It was obvious that something bad was coming – Lucy feared another dragon – even before the ravens returned from scouting to shriek of orcs and goblins and wargs. The older dwarves, the warriors, met the information with a kind of bleak resignation that set Lucy’s heart hammering against the insides of her ribs. The ravens bore the same news to the armies below, and came back to tell the Company that Dain, Bard, and Thranduil had convened to discuss an alliance.

            It was very small relief when the dark film lying over the Earth to the North grew larger every time Lucy glanced away from it.

            “If we fight, we must band together,” Thorin said grimly. “Fili, Kili, you are not to leave my sides.”

            Lucy was almost too tense to be surprised, but not quite. “Kili’s an archer,” she protested. “He should be up out of the way, where he can provide protective fire.”

            “Honor is not won hiding and picking off orcs one by one,” Thorin replied icily, not looking her way. “If you choose to do so, you may.”

            Lucy bit her tongue, and Kili gripped her hand as Thorin turned away, cueing the others to move apart. “You _should_ do that,” he said. “You’d be safer.”

            “I don’t have enough arrows,” Lucy admitted. “I should’ve thought about it earlier . . . and I wouldn’t want to be too far from you in any case.”

            Kili nodded, though it would have been a relief to know that at least one person he cared about was out of the melee on the ground.

 

                       

            “Are you afraid?” he asked, some hours later, when they were on watch at the hidden door. He was. It was a worse kind of fear than the heart-jerking reaction to an unexpected fall or a sudden ambush by orcs – a steadily growing, sickening thing.

            “Yes,” Lucy admitted, tearing her gaze from the encroaching hordes to the North. “But then, I usually am.”

            “You’re always brave,” Kili argued, frowning.

            “Fearlessness is idiocy,” Lucy replied, remembering her grandfather’s words, the medals from Vietnam that he kept in a small, flat wooden box at the back of the closet. “Bravery is action in the face of fear.”

            Kili remembered all too easily the goblin caves, the horrible stillness about her when Lucy had stopped struggling to spare Ori, the deliberateness of her expression and movements even when her eyes were remote. “That still means that you’re brave,” he answered, and she smiled, a little.

            “I try,” she said, and gripped his hand more tightly.            

 

 

            “Don’t be fools,” Dwalin told the youngsters seriously. “Don’t try to be heroes. Think of yer mothers.” And Lucy thought of hers: one buried six feet deep a world away, one, her grandmother, probably still alive, knitting at the kitchen table while Peter did his homework there, and one more mother, holy, always just out of reach, celestial and enduring.

            “At least if we die, it will be with honor,” Ori said nervously.

            “There is no honor in death,” Lucy told him quietly. “When someone is dead, they’re dead, and the way they went doesn’t matter. To say that it does is a lie, and cruel one, because it forces the survivors to make less of their own suffering, when the pain is already great enough.”

            It was almost a blasphemous statement, to the dwarves, and Kili braced himself against Dwalin’s reaction.

            But the old warrior was considering Lucy’s drawn expression with a thoughtful gaze. “Aye,” he agreed, quietly. “She’s right, at the end of things. Don’t speak of it, none of you. Not a word.”

 

 

            “You could still leave,” Kili suggested, when the orcs and goblins were close enough to be seen as an army instead of a smudge. “Hide. We found so many deep places –”

            “Shut up,” Lucy said without bite, because the idea had been tugging at her since that morning, terrible in inumerable ways, and he did.

 

 

            Lucy remembered one of Peter’s favorite poems, when the first sounds of combat reached them inside the Mountain, although the quick wick of fear stole the memory of title and author away from her.

                        _And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?_

_I did._

_And what did you want?_

_To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on this Earth._

            She had been called beloved in two worlds. She couldn’t ask for more, and she didn’t want or need anything more.

            Kili remembered the way his mother had cried when she sent them off with Thorin – without sobbing, as if the few stray tears caught in her beard were mere coincidence. How she had told him, especially, to be good, to be careful, that life was too short and he hadn’t seen enough of it.

            But he thought he had. He’d seen trolls and orcs and goblins and humans and hobbits and a dragon. He’d reclaimed a lost kingdom. He’d felt the kind of love he used to scoff at, when read of in books, as impossible. He had a good, loving family. Eighty-two years wasn’t much, but it could be enough, if it had to be.

           

 

            “Stay close to me,” Lucy told Kili when the wall came down.

            “And you me,” he replied, even as the entreaty made him unaccountably nervous, even under all the fear.

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> BO5A, but remember that this is a sunshine-and-rainbows AU, so no fatalities to anyone we care about.
> 
> Chapters get shorter as we move towards the end, folks. I'm not really losing steam, they're just coming out that way. If you're disappointed, I'm flattered, and would like to say that there will be companion shorts to this story to fill in some gaps that didn't fit in the main work, and delineate some of the before and after of this tale.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: violence, severe character injury.

 

            Lucy had imagined that battle would be like the small skirmishes she was used to, but on a larger scale and magnified in intensity. She was right, at the same time that she was utterly wrong. It was like an everyday thunderstorm compared to a hurricane – technically alike, but different beasts in reality. Battle, it seemed, was more terrible than the sum of its parts. Far more.   

            Time lost all meaning, as it often did in combat, becoming oddly elastic so one minute felt like an hour and hours felt like minutes. Blows had no physical meaning beyond the need to recover before a second, fatal hit was delivered, before the feet of other fighters came down to trample. The turf of the mountainside became shredded and churned. Thick, gloppy mud sucked at Lucy’s boots, and in a brief, distracted moment she wondered when it had rained before she looked down and she realized it was blood that soaked the ground, red and black.

            Kili was her anchor – wherever the current took her, she returned to him and Fili. Thorin was never far from them, either, Dwalin and Balin always at the princes’ backs. Everyone else was lost in the melee – Lucy got an occasional glimpse of a familiar braid or helm, but always it was gone before she could follow it, and the spit-second of distraction was always paid for when an orc or a goblin saw it and swung at her.

            She was strong, had regained much of the endurance lost to the pain and exhaustion of her injured back over the weeks, but inevitably, she tired. The armor which had been so light that morning felt heavy. Evasions of blows that usually felt effortless took an effort. And when an orc’s mace or axe or sword glanced off her shield or vambraces, it sent her spinning an extra rotation or two to dispel the force of the blow. Sometimes it even made her stagger.

            It was never-ending, always another enemy, or two, to replace the one she had just killed, always another dwarf or elf or human being cut down within her sight, before she could reach them to assist. At some point it began to hurt, a full-body ache intensified in random places – back, head, shoulder, knee. She had to have been hit there, though she didn’t remember. At some point her helm had been lost, which probably explained the head pain, but it was a distant relief to regain peripheral vision, to feel cool air card over her sweaty braids.

            She hardly noticed the sun setting, hardly noticed the gathering dusk. A goblin before her went down with a gurgle through the blood frothing at his throat, and she pivoted to return to the princes, as had become almost instinct, in time to see an orc approach, mace raised, as the two grappled with a small clutch of goblins.

            Almost instinct. Four running steps, springing off of something she’d later remember to be a corpse, two more steps, lift shield, catch the blow hard enough to make her entire arm go number even though it only glanced off, spin to distribute the force, to recover –

            She hadn’t seen the second mace, in his other hand.

            She felt it land, though, just below her left shoulder blade, like a small meteorite, and she felt herself hit the ground, and then everything was gone in a white wash of light.

            Fili got the Orc before Kili could, blood slinging from the ends of his braids. “Get up!” he shouted to Kili, who had dropped to his knees when the orc fell. “Kee, you can’t –”

            He hardly heard his brother. _Aulë, please, I know she’s not a Dwarf but please –_ Lucy was breathing, blessedly, gasping really, her arms drawing in and under, fumbling to lift her out of the muck. “No, be still,” he pleaded, pressing her down by the back of her neck, where she wasn’t injured, but she still screamed, and then he saw the unnatural fall of the mail shirt, the deep divot in the smooth curve of her back where there hadn’t been one and shouldn’t be one and his stomach lurched horribly. “No – no, stay still, Luce – here –” There was no time to even try the tiny clasp holding her icon around his neck, he just snapped the chain and doubled it over, lacing it tightly through her fingers so it would stay with her even if her hand went limp. _Hail Mary, please, Mary, please, Mahal –_

            “Up!” Dwalin roared, catching him by the back of the neck like a puppy and forcibly dragging him to his feet.

            “She needs a healer!” Kili shouted, blinking blood out of his eyes. He hardly noticed, didn’t know or care where it came from. “An Elf –”

            “They’re busy with their own!” Dwalin bellowed back. “Stand and fight if ye want her to last the night, lad!”

            He did, but it quickly began to look as though none of them would last the night. It began to seem like the best that could be done was hold their ground, and then they were pushed back again, and the best that could be done was not retreat too far, but there were innumerable Orcs and Goblins, always more to spring forward when others fell. The fight became steadily bleaker under the darkening sky, until the Elves sent up a cry that the Eagles had arrived. The tide turned slowly but inexorably, and Kili was one of many who gained a second wind at seeing that. Not long later, a huge black _thing_ came barreling through the enemy’s left flank, roaring like the end of days. The Goblins screamed and scattered before it like fleeing mice, ignored completely by the beast as it focused on the greater threat of Orcs, crushing Goblins underfoot that happened to be there. Kili only realized it was Beorn when someone else cried the name.

            With the Eagles and the Skinchanger fighting on their side, the Goblins and Orcs fled, and finally, long into the night, it all began to taper off. Kili returned to Lucy at a nod from Dwalin, when it was finally quiet enough for the exchange to even be possible. Relief made him dizzy when he found her still breathing, somehow, albeit in terrifying little pants. Fili was kneeling beside her, axe gripped in his left hand instead of the right, long gone white-knuckled from stress and bleeding. He was pale under the blood spattered across his face, his right arm held low across his stomach. The thick muscle at the shoulder was severed, leaking blood under the crude, slapdash field dressing someone had gotten on it. “Can you stand?” Kili asked him. Fili nodded. He felt afraid for his brother and his lover alike, but it was a muted kind of fear, clamoring under the dull buzzing in his ears that lingered even when he remove d his helm. “Can you walk? You need the healers – you both need the healers.”           

            “Your head is bleeding,” Fili replied, his eyes a little glassy. “But you seem alright. Mother’s always saying you have a thick head.”

            “I’ll be fine,” Kili agreed. “Come on, Fee – up, stand up.” He half-dragged his brother to his feet, wondering how he could get them both anywhere without leaving one or the other, because his brother leaned against him like a crutch, but those nearest them were busy, working their way outward to keep the small clutch of the injured safe against the last few enemies nearby – most of them already injured, and easily dispatched. He’d have to be careful, heading for the healers’ tents, because some sneaky Goblin could crop up from the bodies heaped and littered across the ground and strike if it saw them coming. How –

            There was suddenly a huge heat at his back, like a furnace, and a deep, wet snuffling sound. Kili bit down on a shout to see the massive bear standing over Lucy, sniffing at her face. It made a sound like it had been wounded, nudging her face with its snout. “No!” Kili shouted, almost dropping his brother. “No, I mean – be careful, Beorn!”

            Lucy had mentioned to him, once, that Beorn was as much like a bear, when he was a bear, as he was like a person, when he was a person. He didn’t understand things the same way, and that was why everyone had had to remain inside his house at night, when he was a bear and might not remember that these particular Dwarves were in his good graces.

            But he obviously knew Lucy, if the way he shifted to stand over her and huff dangerously at Kili was any indication.

            “Sword,” Fili croaked, and Kili lowered it.

            Mollified, Beorn returned to his inspection of Lucy. How he’d found her amid all of the carnage, Kili had no idea – the stench of blood was so strong even his nose was protesting, now that his attention wasn’t wholly occupied with more important matters. “She needs the Elves,” he told Beorn. “Elves. Do you understand?”

            “He’s a bear, Kee,” Fili mumbled, swaying against him.

            There was a series of gristly crunches like bone cracking and cartilage grating, and a pained groan from the bear, but inside of a few seconds he had shrugged off his fur and Beorn stood before them as a Man. He was naked and smeared with blood, bearing a deep gash over his left side that exposed muscle and a glint of bone, and still spouting liberal tufts of black fur. “I will take her to the Elves,” he said, crouching, and rising again with Lucy carefully held against his chest the way one held a child, her head resting on his shoulder. “Tend to your own.”

            “But –”

            But nothing. There was nothing for it. Kili watched Beorn go for a moment, and then adjusted his arm under Fili’s shoulders. “Alright,” he said, mostly to himself, to keep at bay the rising flood of something like panic, now that there was room for panic. He crouched slightly, retrieving his sword. “Alright, let’s go – that way, it looks like, we’ll find Oin for you, you’ll be fine, too, we’ll all be just fine . . .”

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aftermath. It's really short, sorry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: aftermath of violence, mentions of grievous bodily harm, feelings of depression.  
> Music: "Youth" by Daughter

 

            The healers’ tents were utter madness, regardless of the race. Kili ran from the Dwarves’ tents, once Fili and Thorin were settled (neither so wounded that he couldn’t tear himself away, both awake and talking and breathing easily), to the tents he thought were the Elves’, only to find Humans there and be redirected to the Eastern flank of the Mountainside. Even the Elves were manic in their state of emergency, novices running to and fro with water and bandages and jars and masters chanting very seriously over the most grievously injured. The same wails of grief that sounded in the other tents sounded here, the same urgent shouts and directions, the same cries and screams of pain.

            He ran up and down half the rows of cots before he found Lucy, catching more than a few suspicious looks from Elves just for being there, all of which he ignored. She looked the same as she had on the ground, pale, lips a faint purplish hue that couldn’t be good, gasping shallowly, more unconscious than not. It took another few minutes to grab onto an Elf who didn’t immediately scrape him off.

            “The Human,” the Elf observed. “The Skinchanger brought her. We told him she would have to go to her own kind –”

            “No,” Kili snapped. “Her own kind can’t help her.”

            “Nor can we,” the Elf replied, not unkindly. “We have too many of our own, and this was not even our fight.”

            “Was it hers?” he bellowed after the Elf, who ignored him. Where the fuck had Beorn gone? Kili’s rage, which had risen suddenly, refocused on the Skinchanger, before he remembered the deep wound over Beorn’s ribs.

            Lucy was still breathing when he went back. He carefully rewrapped the chain of her necklace around her fingers, so the tips weren’t pinched pink, and made sure the pendant was pressed against her palm and held there by the curl of her fingers. The dent in her back he carefully avoided looking at. It looked like certain doom, but Bifur had had an axe blade in his skull for going on a century, now, and brains were more important than . . . whatever was behind that part of Lucy’s back. He had no idea, he realized with mounting panic. Lungs? Liver? How were humans put together, really?

            So determined was Kili to get an Elf healer to her bedside if he had to drag the idiot over with a knife at their throat, he wouldn’t have noticed the random blond Elf standing next to him if he hadn’t bumped right into him. For an instant, he was relieved, thinking a healer had finally taken notice, but this Elf was obviously a warrior, bloody and still carrying weapons.

            Kili bristled at the way he was staring at Lucy, wondering if he’d taken a blow to the head. He only recognized the Elf when he spoke. “I knew no good would come to her,” he observed, _with Dwarves_ remaining unspoken but obvious, and it was the voice that did it – the Elf warrior from the Woodland Realm, the one who Lucy had said she didn’t find handsome, had said she preferred a sturdier sort.

            “Stay here,” he said before Kili could react with more than a glare, and he was gone again. Kili subsided grudgingly, taking Lucy’s hand in both of his. The Elf had more clout than a random dwarf, even a prince. He’d get a healer. He would, because he had to, or Kili didn’t know what would happen.

            “Hail Mary, full of grace,” he said quietly. “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our deaths.” He couldn’t remember the last word, the closing word, but he was fairly certain he had remembered the rest. Kili touched his forehead to Lucy’s, gingerly, praying to his own god, and it was some minutes before he remembered the closing word, and spoke it aloud. “Amen.”

 

 

            It was all a murk of pain and darkness before the sharp acid smell filled her nose, and Lucy gasped, retched, coughed, and retched again at the agony that rolled over her from all of the movement. She was dying. This was dying. She knew dying, remembered it well, remembered days or weeks down in the dark. And she knew she had to keep breathing, one more breath, just one more, every single one _just one more_ , in an endless progression that she couldn’t allow to stop. Just one more. One more and it would stop hurting. One more and it would be worth it one day.

            Someone was shouting, very nearby, but it sounded far-off. It also sounded familiar, and she struggled to open her eyes.

            New voice. “Miss Bell – Lucy? You speak to her, she doesn’t know my voice . . .”

            “Luce?” There was the familiar voice, cajoling now. “Lucy, _khelagh_ , the healer needs you, come on.”

            It took a colossal effort to ratchet her eyelids open even halfway, but she did it, and Kili’s face came into view, the intense worry on his face breaking into a smile that looked just as pained. Something brushed loose hair over her ear. Fingers. Warm, rough. She tried to press into them, couldn’t turn her head.

            His face was promptly replaced by an unfamiliar one. Pale. Cheekbones. Pointy ears. Elf. “I need you to breathe deeply,” he – she? – informed her. “Hold still until I say, and then breathe as deeply as you can.”

            She _had_ been breathing as deeply as she could, this whole time, and that was the problem, because it wasn’t enough. _Just one more_ had long been joined by _faster_ to try to compensate for how impossible it was to breathe deeply enough to feel relief, not when anything but the slightest shift of inhale and exhale caused agony that made the darkness go even blacker, and that couldn’t happen because if it got any darker she couldn’t keep track of the _just one more._

            There were hands moving her arms, her legs, and someone screaming and screaming because it hurt, it hurt like dying even faster than before, and over that a deeper voice roaring something about poppy tears, and her body rebelled against the pain and brought up bile that she choked on. She vaguely heard the elf replying that they were restricting the use of poppy to those in the worst pain.

            There was an argument about pain, out there, but it was impossible to keep track of, not when just one more breath was so important, just one more and it would be okay, and it took concentration to keep the breaths small and even and short enough to keep the darkness from closing over. When she opened her eyes everything was a nauseating blur of disjointed color, so she closed them again.

            “I need you to breathe in now,” the elf said in her ear. “As deeply as you can.”

            She sucked in a breath just slightly less shallow than the ones before it, and keened at the wash of red that smeared across the darkness.

            “Deeper than that,” the elf insisted. _– go away, go away – just one more breath, Mary, pray for us at the hour of our death –_ “Much deeper, as deep as you can.”

            “She can’t!” Kili bellowed, and there was more arguing before something pinched her cheek and she jerked away from it and gasped at the pain of jerking, and then the elf’s face was consuming her field of vision again, because her eyes had opened.

            “If you do not breathe as deeply as you can in the next moment, I will leave and you will die,” it informed her, and that couldn’t happen, the whole point was not dying, not dying was everything, and she sucked in all the air in the room before the premonition of the pain it would cause could stop her.

            There was the grating crunch of bone and cartilage shifting, and stabbing pain under her ribs like thousands of red-hot needles, but worse, all of it worse, beyond description or bearing, and the darkness closed over her like a seal.

            “She’ll live,” said the elf, and left.

 

 

            Over the next few days, the bodies were stacked up and burned, more added as some of the wounded succumbed to their injuries. Fili helped with his unhurt arm, although Oin was always angry to discover the prince’s cot empty, and he held a similar grudge against Kili for running out of the healers’ tent half-cocked with a bleeding head wound on the first night.

            Thorin had been cut across his belly, immensely lucky that the blade had only cut into his fat and muscle. The wound was still deep enough, though, that the healers confined him to bed, for fear that if he so much as sat up, the last remaining barrier between his innards and the air would rupture to a terrible result.

            Nori was missing several fingers.

            Bifur was missing an axe blade that had been lodged in his skull for the better part of a century, and to what end no one could yet guess.

            Gloin was simply missing.       

            Lucy awoke to the aftermath in all its horror – the crackling fires and their friends, oily black smoke and the constant stench of burned meat; the wailing and keening of comrades-in-arms and brothers over their dead; the gut-wrenching lake of wrong-colored mud, which refused to dry up or soak away, the Mountain already sated with as much blood as it could take.

            Kili didn’t want to tell her how bad it had been, although the way she sometimes caught him eyeing the light bandage on her back made her glad he wouldn’t say.

            He didn’t have the words to describe the hollow that had been there, like a scoop out of butter, or the sound it had made when the flex of her inflating lungs popped it back outwards, forcing the bones more or less into place, although the ridges under her skin looked slightly wrong to his untrained eye. That could have been caused by the bruise, though, the black-and-purple stain that marked a good third of her back like a tattoo, just as dark and seeming like it would be just as permanent. The skin was broken in the middle, not torn or cut, but smashed nearly into pulp between the hard surfaces of bone and chainmail.

            It hurt when she breathed, but she could breathe, and she could stand after several days, and walk after that even though the healers shouted and scowled at her, even though it hurt enough to make her vision go black. She could visit Fili, who was quiet and still pale, possibly over the toll of battle, possibly over the knowledge that his arm would never fully recover. She could visit Ori, who was ink-stained and withdrawn from writing down every agonizing detail he could think of. She could visit Dwalin, who used not one crutch, but two, even as he insisted that the deep cut to the back of his left thigh was a mere scratch, even as Balin muttered in her ear that the blade had bitten into the bone.

            Lucy visited Thorin just to be polite, although he was subdued by pain or injury or drugs or horror and lay with his hands neatly folded on the uninjured area of his abdomen with his gaze heavenward, eerily like a corpse laid out for burial.

            She visited Bilbo to confirm for herself that he was alright, and he was, if twitchy and a little odd, but she supposed that was better than silent and gray, like everyone else seemed to be. She felt the same way.

            “Victory seems a very gloomy business,” he observed as they sat in the heather on what of the mountainside had escaped being bloodied, as it was too steep for fighting. Lucy knew she shouldn’t have pressed herself to walk so far, but it was an unaccountable relief to sit on dry, firm ground and feel live, healthy grass beneath her hands.

            “It would seem that it is,” she agreed, and she wondered if he, too, was thinking back to that bright, sunny morning outside Bag End, while he sat smoking and she lay in the fresh green grass, blithely unaware that their adventure would come to this. There were days now that she wondered if the Quest had been an endeavor worthy of its bloodshed. Lucy felt a physical relief at being loved, but the circumstances that had allowed her and Kili to meet had wrought agony and death for countless others, and had caused even the pair of them no small measure of suffering.

            “Are you and Kili very happy?” Bilbo asked as if he could hear her think, searching for the good in this mess.

            Lucy looked down over the wreckage below, the churned ground that still turned up weapons and severed limbs and odd personal artifacts – a lost ring, a buckle, a pocket watch. Warriors of every race still worked to clear it all, throwing what would burn onto the fires, setting aside the rest for bereaved family to try and sort through in the hopes they would find a remnant of their missing son, brother, husband, lover. The thin, cool Mountain air whipped over her face, damp from moving over the Lake, freeing wisps of her hair from the single braid Kili had wrought that morning, one whose meaning she did not know, although the funny looks she received from dwarves were hint enough. The wind lashed the hairs against her eyes, her chapped lips, and she carefully lifted a hand to push them back, feeling the chill that had worked into her cheek as she did.

            “I think we could be,” she said, looking past the desolation to the Lake, past the charred bones of Esgaroth that rose above it surface, past the massive corpse of Smaug that no one seemed to know what to do with, past all of it to the Misty Mountains in the distance, and imagining what lay beyond them – Beorn’s vale and his cozy hall, Rivendell, Bree and Hobbiton and Bag End, her favorite place in this world.

            “You’re not going to stay, are you?” Bilbo asked, following her gaze, moved from his usual hobbit politeness by their circumstances.

            “I have no idea,” Lucy said, because she didn’t. All she knew was that for the time being, she had to stay, held in place by her injuries and the phantom sensation of Kili’s hands in her hair, and she felt so hollow that it wouldn’t surprise her if she consumed everything around herself like a black hole. “I’d like to stay.”

            “Kili would be heartbroken,” Bilbo said, with a hint of his old fretfulness.

            “There are things that Kili does not know,” Lucy replied, brushing back her hair again, futilely. “There are things I don’t know how to tell him.”           

            “Perhaps you don’t need to tell him,” Bilbo suggested. “Perhaps he loves you enough, knowing that he will never know everything.”

            And they were quiet, watched the gray and scorched landscape, watched the wind ruffle the Lake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, Legolas! That's what you're doing here! (There is a method to my madness.)


	11. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's short. I'm sorry. Sometimes adding more would really just screw up the flow, and I favor semi-open endings for all my characters.  
> Music: "Helpless Wanderer" Mumford and Sons

            Lucy was leaving. Kili had been half-afraid that she would ever since the first days following the Battle of Five Armies. Afraid she’d vanish into the wide world again, now that this was over, and he’d never see her again. The idea had been shockingly painful, so he’d ignored it, though he supposed it shouldn’t have been that shocking.

            Kili counted himself immeasurably lucky that she was coming back to him. “Soon,” she reminded him, smiling.

            “How soon?” he pressed, only half teasing, drawing her into him with fingers hooked in her belt.

            The look she gave him was half affection and half exasperation, her face rendered beautifully in light and shadow by the dusty sunshine coming through the open doors of Erebor. She knew the question was only half in jest, but she couldn’t really blame him. He was right to doubt that she’d return, because she’d wandered for nearly a decade, after all, and was still so afraid, in the dark corners of the night, that Kili would lose interest or otherwise move on, that she was tempted to break and run before that could happen. He had divined her fears despite her efforts to hide them, was quick to reassure with deep kisses and earnest assurances – which quickly dissolved into overtly overdone declarations of undying love, no less heartfelt for the humor. One night he’d added that they were as good as betrothed, with his braids in her hair, and Lucy had asked, “Are we?” and he’d parried, nerves under brashness, “Would you like to be?” and she had bit her lip the way she did when she was wildly happy but trying to rein it in, and kissed him.

            They called themselves betrothed, though they had told only his family. And that meant quite a lot, he knew.

            “Soon,” Lucy insisted, quelling the urge to press a hand to her abdomen. “Very soon. I may not even go as far as Bag End.”

            Bilbo gave a cry of distress, overhearing, which made them laugh. “You _promised_!”

            “I didn’t promise, I agreed when you suggested it!” Lucy called back, smiling, and Kili didn’t know how long he’d make it without the sound of her laugh in her voice.

            “If you wish to accompany us at all, we must leave soon,” Gandalf reprimanded her.         Lucy turned back to Kili to find him already gazing up at her, his dark eyes bright and warm and worried all at once. “I love you,” he reminded her, touching the chip of mithril resting over her heart – his, the royal seal, placed around his neck by Thorin when he was born. Lucy’s icon of Mary rested in its place. His mother had sighed when she noticed, reminding Kili that the seal was supposed to stay with him through all his days, but she hadn’t even been surprised. Lucy and Kili had already stretched the bounds of propriety beyond the point of recovery.

            “And I love you,” Lucy replied. The words always felt fragile in her mouth, and precious, in contrast to how dangerous an admission they really formed. But it was true, and worth saying to see the way Kili’s whole being shifted – the light in his eyes, the lift of his shoulders.

            “I’ll be back by spring at latest,” she said, thinking again of her very last secret, blooming and unfurling below her navel. It meant that this would likely be her last romp out in the world, a last chance to check for any news of bright water pooled in impossible ways, and she intended to make the most of it. “I promise.”    

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all, folks! Thank you so much for reading and commenting! Frankly, I'm still somewhat surprised by both. ;)  
> It seems pretentious to assume that any readers are sincerely disappointed this is over or would really like too see more of my work, but I would be pretty chuffed if that were to be the case, and if it is, keep an eye out for that aforementioned accompaniment collection.  
> Thank you again!


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